Ice and Snow in the Cold War: Histories of Extreme Climatic Environments 9781785339875

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ICE AND SNOW IN THE COLD WAR

The Environment in History: International Perspectives Series Editors: Dolly Jørgensen, University of Stavanger; Kieko Matteson, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa; Christof Mauch, LMU Munich; Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum, Munich

Volume 1

Volume 9

Civilizing Nature: National Parks in Global Historical Perspective

The Nature of German Imperialism: Conservation and the Politics of Wildlife in Colonial East Africa

Edited by Bernhard Gissibl, Sabine Höhler, and Patrick Kupper

Bernhard Gissibl

Volume 2

Volume 10

Powerless Science? Science and Politics in a Toxic World Edited by Soraya Boudia and Natalie Jas

In the Name of the Great Work: Stalin’s Plan for the Transformation of Nature and Its Impact in Eastern Europe

Volume 3

Doubravka Olšáková

Managing the Unknown: Essays on Environmental Ignorance

Volume 11

Volume 4

International Organizations and Environmental Protection: Conservation and Globalization in the Twentieth Century

Creating Wildnerness: A Transnational History of the Swiss National Park

Edited by Wolfram Kaiser and Jan-Henrik Meyer Volume 12

Patrick Kupper Translated by Giselle Weiss Volume 5

Managing Northern Europe’s Forests: Histories from the Age of Improvement to the Age of Ecology

Rivers, Memory, and Nation-Building: A History of the Volga and Mississippi Rivers

Edited by K. Jan Oosthoek and Richard Hölzl Volume 13

Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted

A Living Past: Environmental Histories of Modern Latin America

Edited by Frank Uekötter and Uwe Lübken

Volume 6

Fault Lines: Earthquakes and Urbanism in Modern Italy

Edited by John Soluri, Claudia Leal, and José Augusto Pádua

Giacomo Parrinello

Volume 14

Volume 7

Ice and Snow in the Cold War: Histories of Extreme Climatic Environments

Cycling and Recycling: Histories of Sustainable Practices Edited by Ruth Oldenziel and Helmuth Trischler Volume 8

Disrupted Landscapes: State, Peasants and the Politics of Land in Postsocialist Romania Stefan Dorondel

Edited by Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

Ice and Snow in the Cold War Histories of Extreme Climatic Environments

/ Edited by

Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2019 by

Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com

© 2018 Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978–1-78533-986-8 hardback ISBN 978–1-78533-987-5 ebook

/ Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

INTRODUCTIONS Exploring Ice and Snow in the Cold War Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma Cryo-history: Ice, Snow, and the Great Acceleration Sverker Sörlin

3 20

PART I. SCIENCE: SITES OF KNOWLEDGE Chapter 1. Snow and Avalanche Research as Patriotic Duty? The Institutionalization of a Scientific Discipline in Switzerland Dania Achermann

49

Chapter 2. “An Orgy of Hypothesizing”: The Construction of Glaciological Knowledge in Cold War America Janet Martin-Nielsen

69

Chapter 3. “Camp Century” and “Project Iceworm”: Greenland as a Stage for US Military Service Rivalries Ingo Heidbrink

89

Chapter 4. Inuit Responses to Arctic Militarization: Examples from East Greenland Sophie Elixhauser

109

PART II. POLITICS OF CONFRONTATION AND COOPERATION Chapter 5. Creating Open Territorial Rights in Cold and Icy Places: Cold War Rivalries and the Antarctic and Outer Space Treaties Roger D. Launius Chapter 6. An Environment Too Extreme? The Case of Bouvetøya Peder Roberts and Lize-Marié van der Watt

139 163

vi Contents

Chapter 7. Managing the “White Death” in Cold War Soviet Union: Snow Avalanches, Ice Science, and Winter Sports in Kazakhstan, 1960s–1980s Marc Elie

189

PART III. CULTURES AND NARRATIVES OF ICE AND SNOW Chapter 8. Laboratory Metaphors in Antarctic History: From Nature to Space Sebastian Vincent Grevsmühl

211

Chapter 9. Cold War Creatures: Soviet Science and the Problem of the Abominable Snowman Carolin F. Roeder and Gregory Afinogenov

236

Chapter 10. Negotiating “Coldness”: The Natural Environment and Community Cohesion in Cold War Molotovsk-Severodvinsk Ekaterina Emeliantseva Koller

253

Chapter 11. An Exploration of the Self: Reinhold Messner’s Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1989 Pascal Schillings

285

Conclusion. Histories of Extreme Environments beyond the Cold War Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

309

Index

318

/ Illustrations

Figures 1.1. Interior view of the snow laboratory with scales and an apparatus to measure the cohesion of snow samples. Photo: Archiv der Eidg. Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft WSL (AWSL), Gemeinsamer Bericht 1935/36, Addendum H12, Photograph I4 P7. Courtesy of AWSL. 56 4.1. Remnants of air base Bluie East Two, July 2007. Photo: Martl Jung.

115

4.2. Oil barrels at the deserted air base Bluie East Two, July 2017. Photo: Martl Jung.

117

4.3. Nathanielsen’s grandson trying on a military jacket from Bluie East Two, January 2007. Photo: Sophie Elixhauser.

118

4.4. Fishing at the creek next to the air base Bluie East Two, September 2006. Photo: Sophie Elixhauser.

119

4.5. Old signposts near the airport, July 2017. Photo: Martl Jung.

120

4.6. Deserted location of DYE-4 next to the weather station, July 2017. Photo: Martl Jung.

121

4.7. Kulusuk Airport, July 2017. Photo: Martl Jung.

122

4.8. Drum dance performance by Anna Kuitse Thastum, Kulusuk, September 2008. Photo: Sophie Elixhauser.

124

5.1. IGY symbol, the logo of the International Geophysical Year, 1957–58. Source: National Science Foundation.

141

5.2. Aerial view of the first permanent station built at the South Pole, taken on 4 December 1956. The US Navy built seven stations, including one at the South Pole, in support of the International Geophysical Year. Photo: Dick Prescott. Courtesy of the National Science Foundation, Washington, DC.

145

viii Illustrations

5.3. The South Pole Station in 1957, taken during the austral summer of 1956–57. Photo: Cliff Dickey. Courtesy of the National Science Foundation, Washington, DC.

149

5.4. This picture of the limb of the earth, looking north past Antarctica, is a mosaic of eleven images taken during a ten-minute period around 5:45 p.m. (PST), 8 December 1990, by the Galileo spacecraft’s imaging system. Photo: Public domain, NASA/JPL image (https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/ PIA00116).

153

7.1. “Tomorrow at the alpine resort Medeo-Chimbulak.” Photo: V. Evdokimov and G. Popov, Medeo; Alma-Ata: “Zhalyn” Baspasy, 1977.

192

8.1. The father of the US space program Wernher von Braun at the geographical South Pole in January 1967. Photo: NASA, no copyright.

219

8.2. A bulldozer preparing a path during Operation Highjump to lay Marston matting and facilitate unloading of ships. Photo: US Navy, no copyright.

222

8.3. The main buildings of the Naval Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit (NMNRU) in San Diego, officially established 1 June 1959. Photo: US Navy, no copyright.

224

Maps 4.1. The Tasiilaq region, East Greenland. Map: Martl Jung.

113

6.1. Bouvet Island (Bouvetøya). Map: Red Geographics.

164

10.1. Arkhangelsk region (not shown on the map are the Arctic archipelagos of Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya). Map: © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY-SA 2.0.

258

/ INTRODUCTIONS

/ Exploring Ice and Snow in the Cold War Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

I

n 1962 the American missile and aircraft manufacturer Martin Marietta published an advertisement promoting Antarctica’s first nuclear power plant. This small reactor was designed to supply power for approximately one thousand scientists at the US Antarctic Station McMurdo and support a comfortable modern lifestyle that expelled every last trace of the hostile Antarctic environment outside: “Last night in Antarctica, nuclear power lit the bulb, heated the room, fried the eggs, boiled the coffee, kept the scientific instruments running, burned the toast.”1 Small nuclear power plants for ships, submarines, or polar stations are typical components of Cold War–driven approaches to building military infrastructures in remote and often extreme environments around the globe.2 The hubris of employing technology to overcome obstacles of ice and snow on a global scale, and becoming independent of seasonal weather and climate, is characteristic of the dominant attitude toward nature during this era. Robust military technologies, such as icebreakers, airplanes, and snowcats, as well as federal financial support for expensive expeditions enabled the massive assault on and conquest of the poles during the Cold War. The polar regions were Cold War laboratories in which it was possible to test new technologies and develop ways for scientists and soldiers to work under extreme climatic conditions.3 Knowledge of ice and snow, and of how to technologically control these remote and hostile environments, was certainly of scientific value. However, more importantly, it was also of military and geostrategic significance. This volume focuses on the multiple meanings, functions, and uses of cold environments and addresses the question of why ice and snow became an important topic during the Cold War. It explores questions of interest to historians of science and technology, cultural and environmental historians, and scholars in the field of Cold War studies. The time frame ranges from the prehistory of the Cold War in the 1930s to the last of the Cold War years, so as to better illustrate continuities and changes during this era. It considers cold regions as special environments that make political, cultural, scientific, and environmental processes visible in a condensed and place-bound way.

4 Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

Dramatic stories about ice and snow, melting glaciers, and vanishing and cracking ice sheets constantly feature in the news today, along with warnings about impending environmental disasters. These stories and warnings are directly related to pressing societal problems of climate change, rising sea level, and environmental destruction.4 In his introductory essay on cryo-history, Sverker Sörlin asks what kinds of narratives and stories can be told by considering ice and snow not merely as natural but as social categories that are intrinsically linked to human society, history, and politics on a global as well as a local level. Cryo-history in this sense goes beyond the history of science and adopts a broader and culturally richer perspective by focusing on the histories of changing human-nature relations. Related stories do not only include science and scientists—for example, the development of glaciology as a modern discipline—but also cultural and anthropological narratives, local knowledge, and both regional and long-term perspectives. Environmental histories of the Cold War are opening up a new field of research.5 As this volume shows, many pressing questions of global importance have their roots in the Cold War.6 But to tell new stories about global environmental issues goes beyond disciplinary and national boundaries and requires bringing together multiple, often unconnected fields and approaches, including the history of science and technology, international relations, and military and environmental history. During the Cold War the earth began to be considered from the perspective of the planet as a whole for the first time, as several recent landmark studies on global environmental history show.7 John McNeill has pointed to the crucial role of the sciences in connecting the Cold War and the environment in complex and manifold ways.8 Science became absolutely central to the perception of Cold War problems and offered expert solutions. At the same time, it was a placeholder in the realm of Cold War politics to secure knowledge about and provide access to environments and spaces of strategic value. The history of the polar regions and of polar expeditions as well as the role of glaciers and cold climates is a blossoming and interdisciplinary field of research. The International Polar Years and their contribution to global knowledge production is a particular topic of interest.9 Matthias Heymann has investigated the role of Greenland during the Cold War,10 while the cultural geographer Mathew Farish focused on northern American Arctic landscapes in order to enable a better understanding of the people who lived there and the use made of these environments during the Cold War.11 Yet one of the main shortcomings of current Cold War scholarship is the US-centric approach and a lack of contributions on the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc states, as well as on Eastern and Western Europe.12 This situation is slowly beginning to change. We know more about ice and snow in the Soviet Union thanks to the work of scholars like Paul Josephson, John McCannon, Andy Bruno, and

Exploring Ice and Snow in the Cold War 5

Julia Lajus. However there is still much to be learned about Eastern European, Russian, and Soviet activities in the Arctic and Antarctica.13 Knowledge of ice and snow not only emerged among the superpowers, in the United States and the Soviet Union, but also in Switzerland, Bouvet Island, and the Kazakhstan mountains. These multipolar sites of knowledge and associated transnational knowledge flows challenge geographies of the Iron Curtain.14 Sverker Sörlin’s focus on Hans Ahlmann as an actor who bridged the East-West divide is revealing.15 Further work on the international expeditions, institutions, and networks that emerged after World War II is necessary, as well as studies on the activities of countries like India, China, Chile, Malaysia, and South Africa in the polar regions. But there is also a surprising lack of studies of European countries such as Switzerland, Austria, France, or East and West Germany, which have long histories of scientific interest in ice and snow, whether with regard to alpine or polar regions, especially in the period after World War II.

The Polar Regions as Sites of Knowledge In 1950–51 the French geographer Jean Malaurie witnessed the construction of a large US air base at Thule in northwestern Greenland.16 In the tradition of Knud Rasmussen’s Thule Expeditions, Malaurie studied and collected geographic, social, and demographic data of the world’s “most northerly inhabitants” at a time when these Arctic cultures and landscapes were drawn into the middle of Cold War conflicts.17 Malaurie critically described the encounter of these archaic hunter cultures with the modern lifestyle and technology of the US military as a cultural shock that threw these “harpoon men into the atomic age.”18 The US military relocated the inhabitants of Thule further north and, in the course of Operation Blue Jay, transformed the site of the former settlement Pituffik into a hypermodern $800 million station, with cinema, radio telecommunication, radar, and a three-kilometer-long landing strip for the bombers and reconnaissance planes that flew from Thule straight into the heart of Soviet Russia. As the aviator and polar explorer Bernt Balchen wrote in a memorandum for the US Air Force, the topography of Thule was favorable from a military perspective.19 It had a natural harbor and was accessible by icebreaker; there was an area mostly free of permafrost that was suited for the construction of a landing strip. Thule is close to the Greenland inland ice sheet and was the starting point for several expeditions and camps that used the location as a site for testing the construction of military infrastructures and acquiring new knowledge of ice and snow in order to live, fight, and build in these environments. Within a short time the US Army Corps of Engineers transformed Thule into one of the biggest strategically important air bases. As Nikolaj Petersen has pointed out, “the construction of the Thule base in

6 Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

1951–1952 signaled the beginning of the polar strategy.”20 Thule became an important node in the global front lines of the Cold War; its central location between the United States and the Soviet Union made the Arctic highly appealing to US military experts, who hoped to control the vast spaces of the Arctic by integrating it into their air force network.21 World War II had already demonstrated the strategic importance of the Arctic with its Northern Sea Route and weather data. Its military significance increased during the Cold War and necessitated the massive exploration of Arctic spaces.22 US plans for the Arctic culminated in a futuristic Cold War fantasy of creating a gigantic secret missile base underneath the Greenland ice sheet that could target sites in the Soviet Union.23 While the United States treated Greenland as an empty space to be controlled by modern technology, especially radar stations and airfields, in fact it was neither empty nor uninhabited: there were local Inuit hunter cultures close by, members of which had regular contact with the US military. In her anthropological case study on Inuit responses to and experiences and memories of Arctic militarization in Greenland, Sophie Elixhauser shows that the US military presence had a long-term effect on the lifestyles, memories, and cultures of local Inuit in the Ammassalik region in eastern Greenland. Contact and the exchange of expert knowledge between local cultures and the military are highly complex and have only recently come to the fore in postcolonial, cultural, and anthropological studies.24

Knowledge of Ice and Snow Glaciology as a modern scientific discipline and the systematic investigation of glaciers (for example, using photogrammetric methods) dates back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.25 Glaciologists systematically investigated the structures and transformations of ice and snow and their layers, density, volume, and age in both Alpine environments and the polar regions, gaining new insights into earth history, weather patterns, ocean currents, and ice ages. The discipline was also applied to solving more practical problems of avalanche protection and the construction of houses, weather stations, roads, and airstrips in icy regions. As early as 1912–13, the German scientist Alfred Wegener was already pursuing glaciological questions during his second Greenland expedition with the Dane Johann Peter Koch, where they studied snow and firn accumulation in pits. Wegener’s interest in Greenland’s ice sheet culminated in his 1930–31 Greenland expedition, during which he hoped to gain insight into weather and climate conditions and the dynamics of the inland ice, as well as the laws of snow and firn formation.26

Exploring Ice and Snow in the Cold War 7

Systematic scientific knowledge about ice and snow was developed during the interwar period, with Switzerland at the forefront of efforts to better understand the nature and causes of snow avalanches. This is highlighted by Dania Achermann’s chapter on the institutionalization of snow and avalanche research. The Swiss example is revealing because it can help to understand continuities and changes from the interwar period to the Cold War, as well as forms of knowledge transfer and circulation across national and regional borders. Swiss expertise in glaciology is rooted in avalanche research and precaution in the Swiss Alps. In the interwar period the first ice and snow laboratories were established, and new methods were developed to systematically collect scientific data regarding ice and snow behavior, density, layers, and formation. The Swiss scientist Henri Bader drew on his expertise in crystallography in the standard book Der Schnee und seine Metamorphose, published in 1939 (the English translation, Snow and Its Metamorphism, was commissioned by the US government in 1954).27 The goal was to better understand the formation of snow avalanches in Alpine contexts. The new discipline combined laboratory methods with field science approaches in order to gain insight into the nature of ice and snow, a fragile subject of study that quickly lost its defining characteristics if transferred to a traditional laboratory. Thus special ice and snow laboratories with controlled conditions to directly observe ice and snow formation were necessary. It is also relevant in the Swiss case that international cooperation was limited by national concerns, especially during World War II. In contrast to the Soviet Union and many European countries, the United States had little scientific experience of polar exploration and needed new knowledge in order to build military infrastructures, defense lines, air bases, and radar and weather stations in extremely hostile environments.28 In World War II the US Air Force depended on the know-how of experienced European polar explorers for teaching pilots survival skills in Arctic environments. The science of glaciology only began to be fostered in the United States as a consequence of the new Cold War–driven interest in the polar regions. The earth sciences and geophysics blossomed all over the world in the Cold War, especially during the International Geophysical Year (IGY) 1957–58. In view of the flourishing of this research field, one scholar asks, “How was it that, for all the earth science disciplines, the postwar decades were probably the most productive periods in their histories?”29 The answer to this question, at least from a Cold War perspective, is clear: geophysical data were necessary for atomic warfare involving intercontinental ballistic missiles, U-boats, and heavy bombers.30 As Janet Martin-Nielsen shows in her article on Henri Bader, the United States was driven by military concerns during the Cold War. The US Army, and its Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment (SIPRE) in partic-

8 Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

ular, pushed ice and snow studies. SIPRE was founded in 1949 and directed by Bader himself. To obtain systematic, regular data beyond that collected during expeditions, a permanent station had to be erected and, if possible, integrated into an expanding network of weather stations around the globe. The Soviet drift station, for example, made it possible to study ice and the changing weather and water conditions over an extended period of time. While the study of ice and snow gives basic insight into climate patterns and the role of polar ice sheets in climate history, Janet Martin-Nielsen shows that US endeavors were mainly driven by an engineering approach. Ice and snow had to be controlled in order to build airfields, military infrastructures, and radar and weather stations. Indeed, building military infrastructures around the globe in remote but strategically important extreme and hostile environments was a characteristic feature of the Cold War. This engineering approach is also emphasized in Ingo Heidbrink’s study of ice and snow as construction materials in Greenland, which looks more closely at the Camp Century site erected by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1959. Like in McMurdo, a small nuclear reactor was temporarily established at Camp Century and publicly promoted. A further shared characteristic was the lack of knowledge exchange with local people. For Heidbrink it is characteristic of the United States to treat these areas as if they were terra nullius, unclaimed land in which the military could do as they wished. The behavior of the natural environment was also largely ignored; technological control of the environment did not take into account the powerful ice sheet dynamics that ultimately destroyed Camp Century.

The Politics of Cooperation and Confrontation Scientific cooperation and the exchange of data and ideas, as well as the transfer of methods, instruments, technological artefacts, and scientists across national borders, are characteristic of polar exploration, although the results are often interpreted as mere national achievements.31 As John Krige has pointed out, the process of establishing US hegemony during the Cold War was largely dependent on transnational knowledge flows that secured hegemony via open knowledge and cooperation.32 In this context the questions that remain to be answered are how different nations within the Eastern and Western Blocs profited or suffered from their cooperation with the Cold War superpowers and whether flows of knowledge across the Iron Curtain were possible. During the Cold War scientists organized international committees and unions such as SCAR, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research founded in 1958, in order to continue the international research conducted in Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year 1957–58.33 Sixty-seven nations around the globe had pursued earth science investigations into the planet during the In-

Exploring Ice and Snow in the Cold War 9

ternational Geophysical Year. The IGY enhanced scientific cooperation across national and ideological boundaries and provided insight into global weather and climate patterns, ocean currents, and snow and ice covers. But such global geophysical data were also of immense strategic value. From a political perspective, the exploration of Antarctica has a strong resemblance to the space race during this period. Both shed new light on the geostrategic dimension of these realms. Roger Launius shows that the Antarctic Treaty (1959), like the Outer Space Treaty (1967), has to be understood in the context of Cold War rivalries and emphasizes the political role of science in the appropriation of spaces that were outside national borders and territories. Both treaties are landmarks not only in the history of international relations and the governance of global commons but also in the history of the Cold War. Both treaties established a regime that is based on peaceful international scientific cooperation and nuclear-free zones during the height of the early Cold War. At the same time, these achievements came in the midst of a growing nuclear arms race; Antarctica was also appealing as a possible nuclear test site, and its oceans and ice caps were considered as sites for storing nuclear waste. A study of a single site over an extended period of time can illustrate the variety of geopolitical interests struggling for control over the polar regions. Peder Roberts and Lize-Marié van der Watt trace the history of Bouvet Island in the Southern Ocean. During the interwar period it was a Norwegian whaling station, although the United Kingdom attempted to contest the Norwegian claim to the island. In the 1950s South Africa, which later took part in the IGY and was a founding member of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), became interested in Bouvet Island and tried to cooperate with Norway to construct a weather station in the context of what was to become the IGY network. While these actors were not at the center of Cold War conflict, the island was also of geostrategic relevance for the Soviet Union; at this early stage the Soviet interest in Antarctica was covert and not part of the early IGY plans and negotiations. However, the significance of ice and snow during the Cold War was not limited to the polar regions. Just as in the Swiss Alps, problems resulting from avalanches and the needs of a growing tourist industry motivated the development of high-risk areas in both Western nations and in the Soviet Union and its satellite states. The example of the Kazakhstan mountains is typical of a self-confident approach to nature. Here, the Soviet state was not interested in military infrastructure, but rather the high modern development of a mountain region for tourism and the prestigious Winter Olympics. Glaciological knowledge and avalanche prevention were considered key to developing these regions in Central Asia under Soviet rule. As Marc Elie shows, nature was conquered and tamed by modern science and technology, exposing the expanding cities in cold regions to severe risks and environmental destruction.

10 Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

Cultures and Narratives of Ice and Snow The laboratory is a recurring trope in narratives of ice, snow, and cold regions.34 On the one hand, scientific study of the polar regions was informed by modern laboratory methods for collecting data—for example, measuring oxygen isotopes or even radioactive fallout to date the age of ice cores and snow layers. On the other hand, the laboratory metaphor also has a broader political dimension, insofar as scientific expeditions have to be considered in the context of geostrategic conflicts and interests that were channeled and realized by and through the sciences and scientists.35 Sebastian Vincent Grevsmühl shows that Antarctica with its peculiar physical features was perceived as “the largest laboratory in the world” and a unique site for researchers in many disciplines. Field sciences like geology, meteorology, and glaciology merged with the laboratory sciences and with cultural narratives: the polar regions were considered to be a “natural laboratory” with “pure” environmental conditions untouched by humans for thousands of years.36 In addition, Antarctica was used as a laboratory for mimicking the conditions of space exploration. The medical and psychological effects on astronauts in outer space could be tested and compared with the experiences of scientists who overwintered in Antarctica. Stories about ice and snow can also be told in a broader cultural and transnational framework, as Carolin F. Roeder and Gregory Afinogenov show in their contribution about the Soviet yeti craze. During its peak in the late 1950s, the craze had become an international cultural phenomenon at the intersection of public media and fringe, amateur and pseudoscience. While the yeti was a transnational phenomenon, the Soviet approach was distinctive because of the way it brought lay audiences and amateurs together with members of the Academy of the Sciences. The yeti fad can be compared to the space travel craze during the same period. Science became more popular and received increasing levels of state support and media coverage. After a while, the Soviet science establishment distanced itself from the phenomenon; the re-emergence of interest in the yeti in the late 1980s can be seen in the context of a growing public interest in occult phenomena. Ekaterina Emeliantseva Koller focuses on the closed city of MolotovskSeverodvinsk, an important production site for nuclear submarines in the Soviet Union. She shows how people in the Brezhnev era took the harsh climate in their stride as a source of symbolic capital and as a central component of community cohesion and self-identification. Narratives about the cold became a central element in the city’s foundation myth, which took up Stalinist narratives about heroic Soviet citizens’ conquest of nature in the Arctic. Authorities and inhabitants used the cold to legitimize and receive bonuses and higher

Exploring Ice and Snow in the Cold War 11

wages. They successfully established the image of Molotovsk-Severodvinsk as a unique “Far North” area, even though the climatic conditions were not exceptional when compared to settlements in the surrounding area. As Pascal Schilling’s contribution on the transpolar expedition of Reinhold Messner and Arved Fuchs demonstrates, perceptions of the polar region changed during the 1970s and 1980s. While Messner and Fuchs inscribed their polar expedition into the stories and heroic myths of polar exploration in the late nineteenth century, they explicitly rejected and denied the technologies and approaches of the Cold War. Instead, Messner and Fuchs understood their trans-Antarctic trip as an exploration of the self and a personal, even spiritual, experience of nature, self, and body. While profiting from satellite communication and lucrative as well as extensive media coverage of their voyage, they rejected the modern science, technology, and military approaches that were developed during the Cold War period. They did not want to enter the US south polar station and enjoy the comforts of modern life. Instead they underlined environmental concerns and a new awareness that is typical for the 1970s and 1980s, when new actors entered the polar regions and questioned the established scientific and political actors that had hitherto shaped Antarctic politics. The expedition coincided with the de facto end of the Cold War: the fall of the Berlin Wall. In this period further new actors and environmental interests, and a new perception of wilderness and global environmental concerns, came to the fore. These concerns were expressed not only by scientists but also by new interest groups such as Greenpeace, who campaigned for making Antarctica a nature reserve—a world park—and criticized not only military, touristic, and technological approaches, but also the erection of scientific research stations. The thematic and methodological scope of this volume extends beyond the common narratives of Cold War histories that consider the era mainly in terms of political confrontation between power centers. The contributions can be read as a narrative of adaption to cold environments in everyday lives and practices. The technologies (e.g., avalanche research, climate and weather observation) that were tested and developed in the polar regions changed the meaning and the nature of ice and snow in a general sense. Transport technologies and new ways of coping with the cold transformed local and global geographies and polar environments. From the Western point of view, faraway places (e.g., Greenland, Antarctica, the Artic) became part of everyday lives as a result of the practices dealing with these conditions, but also as a result of narratives about coping with these extreme environments and the popular images of polar travel and the “conquest” of ice and snow. Common histories of the Cold War are often narrated from a state perspective or scrutinized through the lens of international politics. By focusing on questions of how the

12 Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

exploration of ice and snow made icy peripheries centers of action, we focus on moments of exchange between local cultures, modern science, and Eastern and Western societies, as well as the people involved. The agents of our stories include the people who dealt and are dealing with extreme environments, be it the scientist from the Western or Eastern Bloc or the people who lived in these environments. From their perspectives, it is possible to appreciate how trajectories of knowledge gain momentum: examples of adaption show not only how science changed everyday lives in the context of local cultures, but also how (modern) scientists learned techniques of dealing with the cold from people who possessed genuine, and often tacit, local knowledge. A good example here is Alfred Wegener’s Greenland experience. Wegner relied on indigenous knowledge of traveling and surviving in extreme environments and at the same time tried to introduce new means of transportation and communication that then shaped the Cold War period. In this sense, modern approaches can be integrated into and compared with longue durée developments and older habits and ways of dealing with the cold. This sheds light on three major phases of human encounter with the cold; during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the exploration of cold environments had empire- and nation-building functions. In tsarist Russia, for example, the scientific exploration of frost, ice, and snow became a means of integrating distant regions into the empire and carrying science, European morals, and the ideas of the Enlightenment to the peripheries of the realm. Its attempt to tame the cold through the sciences was also an attempt to present itself as a European state. In the Soviet Union of the 1930s, the exploration and appropriation of the Arctic delivered a message to its own people. The Soviet government used events like the rescue of the Chelyuskin crew in 1934 or the flight over the North Pole in 1937 as a tool to create an Arctic myth; this myth was supposed to unite a country that was terribly distressed by Stalinist terror and collectivization. The Arctic environments, which were closely connected to heroic tales of man versus cold nature, shaped identities within the communities that undertook these endeavors. The 1950s, however, threw light on a new emerging era, the third period at the heart of this volume. New technologies and the military turned the polar regions into sites of strategic concern and intense scientific research. They were Cold War environments in which new knowledge emerged and new forms of political cooperation and conflict were practiced and negotiated. The IGY and the modeling of the earth as a system led to the integration of polar environments into the globe as a whole, and the Antarctic Treaty System from 1959 defined Antarctica as a peaceful place without atomic weapons. The perception of the Arctic and of Antarctica as both being part of the global commons is central to this third phase and is based on the legacies, imaginaries, and knowledge that resulted from the Cold War years. Today these places are certainly still of military and geopolitical

Exploring Ice and Snow in the Cold War  13

significance, but they are also places where new histories of cold and extreme environments emerge. Julia Herzberg is Professor of the History of East Central Europe and Russia in Early Modern Times at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. Over the last few years she has done research on the environmental history of Eastern Europe and Russia. She coedited Umweltgeschichte(n): Ostmitteleuropa von der Industrialisierung bis zum Postsozialismus (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013) with Martin Zückert und Horst Förster. She is currently working on an environmental history of “frost” in Russia that scrutinizes various social and cultural aspects of Russia’s harsh climate. Christian Kehrt is Professor of History of Science and Technology at the Technical University Braunschweig. He studied history and philosophy at the University of Tübingen and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His PhD at the Technical University Darmstadt was on military pilots in the two world wars. He was a fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich and published a book on the Hamburg Sturmflood together with Martina Hessler. His research interests lie in the cultural history of science, technology, and the environment, encompassing the history of nanotechnology, aviation, and the polar regions. Franziska Torma works on the history of marine biology at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich (project funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG). Torma studied history and theater studies in Munich and Bochum. In 2009 she completed her PhD, which focused on German scientific expeditions that described and mapped Central Asia between 1890 and 1930. She has published on the history of mountaineering, on animal protection issues in Africa, on Germany and the oceans, and on the broader field of colonialism with special reference to Germany’s colonial culture and ideology. Her research interests include the history of science and the cultural and environmental history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Notes   1. Scientific American 207, no. 3 (September 1962): 43.   2. See Lawrence H. Suid, The Army’s Nuclear Power Program: The Evolution of a Support Agency (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990).   3. Matthew Farish, “Creating Cold War Climates: The Laboratories of American Globalism,” in Environmental Histories of the Cold War, ed. John R. McNeill and Corinna R. Unger, Publications of the German Historical Institute (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

14 Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

4. Christian Huggel et al., eds., The High-Mountain Cryosphere: Environmental Changes and Human Risks (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 5. John R. McNeill and Corinna R. Unger, “Introduction: The Big Picture,” in Environmental Histories of the Cold War, ed. McNeill and Unger, Publications of the German Historical Institute (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 6. See Silvia Berger Ziauddin, David Eugster, and Christian Wirth, eds. Der kalte Krieg: Kältegrade eines globalen Konflikts (Zürich: Diaphanes, 2017). 7. Sabine Höhler, Spaceship Earth in the Environmental Age (London: Pickering and Chattoo, 2015); Simone Turchetti and Peder Roberts, eds., The Surveillance Imperative: The Rise of the Geosciences During the Cold War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 8. McNeill and Unger, “The Big Picture,” 13. 9. Susan Barr and Cornelia Lüdecke, eds., The History of the International Polar Years (IPYs) (Berlin: Springer, 2010); Roger D. Launius, James R. Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin, eds., Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years, Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 10. Carlsberg Foundation, project, “Exploring Greenland: Science and Technology in Cold War Settings” (2010–13); Matthias Heymann and Janet Martin-Nielsen, “Introduction: Perspectives on Cold War Science in Small European States,” Centaurus 55, no. 3 (August 2013); Ronald E. Doel, Kristine Harper, and Matthias Heymann, eds, Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2016). 11. Matthew Farish, “Frontier Engineering: From the Globe to the Body in the Cold War Arctic,” Canadian Geographer 50, no. 2 (June 2006); Matthew Farish, “The Lab and the Land: Overcoming the Arctic in Cold War Alaska,” Isis 104, no. 1 (March 2013); Matthew Farish, The Contours of America’s Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 12. Klaus Gestwa and Stefan Rohdewald, “Verflechtungsstudien: Naturwissenschaft und Technik im Kalten Krieg,” Osteuropa 10 (2009): 6; Corinna R. Unger, “Cold War Science: Wissenschaft, Politik und Ideologie im Kalten Krieg,” Neue Politische Literatur 51, no. 1 (2006): 49; Klaus Gestwa, “Polarisierung der Sowjetgeschichte: Die Antarktis im Kalten Krieg,” Osteuropa 61 (2011). 13. John McCannon, Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); John McCannon, A History of the Arctic: Nature, Exploration and Exploitation (London: Reaction Books, 2012); Paul R. Josephson, The Conquest of the Russian Arctic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Gestwa, “Polarisierung der Sowjetgeschichte”; Gestwa and Rohdewald, “Verflechtungsstudien,” 6; Corinna R. Unger, “Cold War Science,” 49. 14. Cold War internationalism and cooperation comprises treaties, scientific projects, and practices: Martin H. Geyer and Johannes Paulmann, eds., The Mechanics of Internationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). This book was one of the first comprehensive volumes that identified internationalism as a key concept and challenged predominant narratives of nation-state and nationalism by focusing on the question of how internationalism “worked.”

Exploring Ice and Snow in the Cold War 15

15. Julia Lajus, “In Search for Instructive Models: The Russian State at a Crossroads to Conquering the North,” in Northscapes: History, Technology, and the Making of Northern Environments, ed. Dolly Jorgensen and Sverker Sörlin (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013); Sverker Sörlin, “Ice Diplomacy and Climate Change: Hans Ahlmann and the Quest for a Nordic Region Beyond Borders,” Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region: Norden beyond Borders, ed. Sverker Sörlin (Farnham: Ashgate 2013); Julia Lajus and Sverker Sörlin, “Melting the Glacial Curtain: The Soft Politics of Scandinavian Soviet Networks in the Geophysical Field Sciences between Two Polar Years, 1932/33–1957/58,” Journal of Historical Geography 44 (April 2014). 16. Jean Malaurie, “The French Geographical Expedition to Thule, 1950–1951: A Preliminary Report,” Arctic 8, no. 4 (1955). 17. Malaurie, “French Geographical Expedition,” 203. 18. Jean Malaurie, Les derniers rois de Thulé (Paris: Plon, 1989), 551. 19. Bernt Balchen to McCone, Memorandum no. 17, 20 December 1951 (Bernt Balchen Collection, folder 60, AFHRA), in Grønland under den Kolde Krig. Bilag. Dansk og amerikansk sikkerhedspolitik 1945–68 (Copenhagen: Dansk Unrigspolitisk Institut, 1997), 70–73. 20. Nikolaj Petersen, “SAC at Thule Greenland in the US Polar Strategy,” Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 2 (2011): 90. 21. Nikolaj Petersen, “SAC at Thule Greenland in the US Polar Strategy,” Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 2 (Spring 2011); US Army, The Big Picture: Operation Blue Jay, documentary film, produced by Signal Corps Pictorial Center (Fort Gordon, GA: US Army Signal Corps, 1953). 22. Fae L. Korsmo, “Glaciology, the Arctic, and the US Military, 1945–1958,” in New Spaces of Exploration: Geographies of Discovery in the Twentieth Century, ed. Simon Naylor and James R. Ryan, Tauris Historical Geography (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 126. 23. Eric D. Weiss, “Cold War under the Ice: The Army’s Bid for a Long-Range Nuclear Role, 1959–1963,” Journal of Cold War Studies 3, no. 3 (Fall 2001); see also Ingo Heidbrink’s contribution to this volume. 24. Julie Cruikshank, Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005); Mark Carey, In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 25. See, for example, the photogrammetric work of Sebastian Finsterwalder (1862–1951) in the Bavarian and Austrian Alps. Finsterwalder was a professor of mathematics at the Technical University of Munich and crucial to the long-term measurement and monitoring, from 1889 to the present, of the Vernagtferner (Ötztal region) as a model glacier. See Kurt Brunner, “Die Karte ‘Der Vernagt-Ferner im Jahre 1889’ als erste exakte Kartierung eines Gesamtgletschers,” Zeitschrift für Gletscherkunde und Glazialgeologie 29, no. 1 (1993). 26. Janet Martin-Nielsen, Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Politics at the Center of Greenland (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Christian Kehrt, “The Wegener Diaries: Scientific Expeditions into the Eternal Ice,” Environment & Society Portal digital exhibition (Munich: Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, 2013).

16 Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

27. Henri Bader, Der Schnee und seine Metamorphose: Erste Ergebnisse und Anwendungen; Systematische Untersuchung der alpinen Winterschneedecke (Bern: Kümmerly & Frey, 1939). 28. See Ingo Heidbrink’s contribution to this volume. 29. John Cloud, “Introduction: Special Guest-Edited Issue on the Earth Sciences in the Cold War,” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003): 629. 30. Ronald E. Doel, “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA after 1945,” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003). 31. See Pascal Schillings, “First at the South Pole: The Production of Geographical ‘Matters of Fact’ during the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition, 1910–12,” Historical Social Research 40, no. 1 (2015); Die letzten weißen Flecken: Europäische Antarktisreisen um 1900. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2017. 32. John Krige, American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (Transformations) (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). 33. Sidney Chapman, ed., The Histories of the International Polar Years and the Inception the Development of the International Geophysical Year, Annals of the International Geophysical Year (New York: Pergamon Press, 1959); Launius, Fleming, and DeVorkin, Globalizing Polar Science; Barr and Lüdecke, eds., The History of the International Polar Years (IPYs). 34. For an understanding of the laboratory metaphor as a reconfiguration of social and natural order, see Karin Knorr-Cetina, Wissenskulturen: Ein Vergleich naturwissenschaftlicher Wissensformen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999), 45–73; Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). In the context of alpine expeditions and mountaineering, see Philipp Felsch, Laborlandschaften: Physiologische Alpenreisen im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007), 7; Charlotte Bigg, David Aubin, and Philipp Felsch, “Introduction: The Laboratory of Nature—Science in the Mountains,” Science in Context 22, no. 3 (September 2009); see also Christian Kehrt, “Grönland im Kalten Krieg,” Technikgeschichte 80, no. 3 (2013): 248. 35. Aant Elzinga, “Antarctica: The Construction of a Continent by and for Science,” in Denationalizing Science, ed. E. Crawford (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993). 36. Kristian H. Nielsen, Michael Harbsmeier, and Christopher J. Ries, eds., Scientists and Scholars in the Field: Studies in the History of Fieldwork and Expeditions (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2012).

Bibliography Bader, Henri. Der Schnee und seine Metamorphose: Erste Ergebnisse und Anwendungen; Systematische Untersuchung der alpinen Winterschneedecke. Bern: Kümmerly & Frey, 1939. Balchen, Bernt, to McCone. Memorandum no. 17, 20 December 1951. Bernt Balchen Collection, folder 60, AFHRA. In Grønland under den Kolde Krig. Bilag. Dansk og amerikansk sikkerhedspolitik 1945–68, 70–73. Copenhagen: Dansk Unrigspolitisk Institut, 1997.

Exploring Ice and Snow in the Cold War 17

Barr, Susan, and Cornelia Lüdecke, eds. The History of the International Polar Years (IPYs). Berlin: Springer, 2010. Berger Ziauddin, Silvia, David Eugster, and Christian Wirth, eds. Der kalte Krieg: Kältegrade eines globalen Konflikts. Zürich: Diaphanes, 2017. Bigg, Charlotte, David Aubin, and Philipp Felsch. “Introduction: The Laboratory of Nature— Science in the Mountains.” Science in Context 22, no. 3 (September 2009): 311–21. Brunner, Kurt. “Die Karte ‘Der Vernagt-Ferner im Jahre 1889’ als erste exakte Kartierung eines Gesamtgletschers.” Zeitschrift für Gletscherkunde und Glazialgeologie 29, no. 1 (1993): 93–98. Carey, Mark. In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Carlsberg Foundation, project. “Exploring Greenland: Science and Technology in Cold War Settings.” 2010–13. Chapman, Sydney, ed. The Histories of the International Polar Years and the Inception the Development of the International Geophysical Year. Annals of the International Geophysical Year. New York: Pergamon Press, 1959. Cloud, John. “Introduction: Special Guest-Edited Issue on the Earth Sciences in the Cold War.” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003): 629–33. Cruikshank, Julie. Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005. Doel, Ronald E. “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA after 1945.” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003): 635–66. Doel, Ronald E., Kristine Harper, and Matthias Heymann, eds. Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2016. Elzinga, Aant. “Antarctica: The Construction of a Continent by and for Science.” In Denationalizing Science, edited by E. Crawford, 73–106. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993. Farish, Matthew. “Frontier Engineering: From the Globe to the Body in the Cold War Arctic.” Canadian Geographer 50, no. 2 (June 2006): 177–96. ———. The Contours of America’s Cold War. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. ———. “Creating Cold War Climates: The Laboratories of American Globalism.” In Environmental Histories of the Cold War, edited by John R. McNeill and Corinna R. Unger, Publications of the German Historical Institute, 51–83. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. ———. “The Lab and the Land: Overcoming the Arctic in Cold War Alaska.” Isis 104, no. 1 (March 2013): 1–29. Felsch, Philipp. Laborlandschaften: Physiologische Alpenreisen im 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007. Gestwa, Klaus. “Polarisierung der Sowjetgeschichte: Die Antarktis im Kalten Krieg.” Osteuropa 61 (2011): 271–89. Gestwa, Klaus, and Stefan Rohdewald. “Verflechtungsstudien: Naturwissenschaft und Technik im Kalten Krieg.” Osteuropa 10 (2009): 5–15. Geyer, Martin H., and Johannes Paulmann, eds. The Mechanics of Internationalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

18 Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

Heymann, Matthias, and Janet Martin-Nielsen. “Introduction: Perspectives on Cold War Science in Small European States.” Centaurus 55, no. 3 (August 2013): 221–42. Höhler, Sabine. Spaceship Earth in the Environmental Age. London: Pickering and Chattoo, 2015. Huggel, Christian, Mark Carey, John J. Clague, and Andreas Kääb, eds. The High-Mountain Cryosphere: Environmental Changes and Human Risks. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Josephson, Paul R. The Conquest of the Russian Arctic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Kehrt, Christian. “Grönland im Kalten Krieg.” Technikgeschichte 80, no. 3 (2013): 241–62. ———. “The Wegener Diaries: Scientific Expeditions into the Eternal Ice.” Environment & Society Portal digital exhibition. Munich: Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, 2013. Retrieved 15 September 2017 from http://www.environmentandsociety .org/exhibitions/wegener-diaries. Knorr-Cetina, Karin. Wissenskulturen: Ein Vergleich naturwissenschaftlicher Wissensformen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999. Korsmo, Fae L. “Glaciology, the Arctic, and the US Military, 1945–1958.” In New Spaces of Exploration: Geographies of Discovery in the Twentieth Century, edited by Simon Naylor and James R. Ryan. Tauris Historical Geography, 125–47. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010. Krige, John. American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (Transformations). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. Lajus, Julia. “In Search for Instructive Models: The Russian State at a Crossroads to Conquering the North.” In Northscapes: History, Technology, and the Making of Northern Environments, edited by Dolly Jorgensen and Sverker Sörlin, 110–36. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013. Lajus, Julia, and Sverker Sörlin. “Melting the Glacial Curtain: The Soft Politics of Scandinavian Soviet Networks in the Geophysical Field Sciences between Two Polar Years, 1932/33–1957/58.” Journal of Historical Geography 44 (2014): 44–59. Latour, Bruno. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. Launius, Roger D., James R. Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin, eds. Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Malaurie, Jean. “The French Geographical Expedition to Thule, 1950–1951: A Preliminary Report.” Arctic 8, no. 4 (1955): 202–14. ———. Les derniers rois de Thulé. Paris: Plon, 1989. Martin-Nielsen, Janet. Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Politics at the Center of Greenland. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. McCannon, John. Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932–1939. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ———. A History of the Arctic: Nature, Exploration and Exploitation. London: Reaction Books, 2012. McNeill, John R., and Corinna R. Unger. “Introduction: The Big Picture.” In Environmental Histories of the Cold War, edited by McNeill and Unger. Publications of the German Historical Institute, 1–18. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Exploring Ice and Snow in the Cold War 19

Nielsen, Kristian H., Michael Harbsmeier, and Christopher J. Ries, eds. Scientists and Scholars in the Field: Studies in the History of Fieldwork and Expeditions. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2012. Petersen, Nikolaj. “SAC at Thule Greenland in the US Polar Strategy.” Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 2 (Spring 2011), 90–115. Schillings, Pascal. “First at the South Pole: The Production of Geographical ‘Matters of Fact’ during the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition, 1910–12.” Historical Social Research 40, no. 1 (2015): 203–18. ———. Die letzten weißen Flecken: Europäische Antarktisreisen um 1900. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2017. Sörlin, Sverker. “Ice Diplomacy and Climate Change: Hans Ahlmann and the Quest for a Nordic Region Beyond Borders.” In Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region: Norden beyond Borders, edited by Sverker Sörlin, 23–54. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Suid, Lawrence H. The Army’s Nuclear Power Program: The Evolution of a Support Agency. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. Turchetti, Simone, and Peder Roberts, eds. The Surveillance Imperative: The Rise of the Geosciences during the Cold War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Unger, Corinna R. “Cold War Science: Wissenschaft, Politik und Ideologie im Kalten Krieg.” Neue Politische Literatur 51, no. 1 (2006): 49–68. US Army. The Big Picture: Operation Blue Jay. Documentary film. Produced by Signal Corps Pictorial Center. Fort Gordon, GA: US Army Signal Corps, 1953. Weiss, Eric D. “Cold War under the Ice: The Army’s Bid for a Long-Range Nuclear Role, 1959–1963.” Journal of Cold War Studies 3, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 1–58.

/ Cryo-history Ice, Snow, and the Great Acceleration Sverker Sörlin

At this moment of history that we are in, in the first decades of the twenty-

first century, we can see an enhanced awareness of the significance of snow and ice. These fragile aggregation forms of matter appear to us now almost as a frost-clad owl of Minerva who flies at our planet’s dusk. They vanish before our eyes. We hear it in the news. We see the polar bear images, and although they are certainly far from new—my oldest archival finding of the sweating white bear on his shrinking ice floe is from 1947, published in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter—they have indeed become more frequent. Sitting solemnly on the equator, the snows of Kilimanjaro—the prevailing, but vastly different, significance of the title of his short story might never have occurred to Ernest Hemingway—have become another symbol of the waning indicator species of a planet under severe pressure.1 The cryosphere, named by the Polish glaciologist Antoni Dobrowolski already in 1923 (and possibly conceived several years before that), in a volume entitled Historja naturalna lodu (Natural history of ice), has gone from the (contested)2 name of a geophysical feature to a significant cultural phenomenon, one of the life-sustaining spheres—the atmosphere, the biosphere—that once they are known occupy a place in what it means to care for human life and human societies.

A New Language of Change How could this rising significance of ice be understood? Why cryo-history? What is it? Why this interest in histories of ice and snow? This chapter is about these questions. The rising of the ice and snow as historical categories happened at the same time as we are developing a new language for the causes and effects that are involved. We are getting used to concepts such as the Anthro-

Cryo-history 21

pocene, a relatively new word in this articulation—since around 2000—but not a new idea; precursors can be found generations back in various articulations.3 This language is only now gaining broad usage, including the concept “the Great Acceleration,” which refers to the rapid growth of multiple entities, from the use of digital media and cell phones to the use of natural resources, the consumption of energy, and the emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leaving no doubt of the hegemonic influence that humanity exerts on the earth system. The Great Acceleration concept was first introduced as a concept in an earth systems science conference in Berlin 20054 and then widely spread as part and parcel of the burgeoning Anthropocene thinking and research.5 This language, especially the concept “Anthropocene” has permeated from the earth sciences and atmospheric chemistry into the social sciences and the humanities, where it has received support as well as critical debate and probing questions.6 The humanities, especially the environmental humanities, have carried the concept far beyond its origins.7 The idea that societies now operate under a new “human condition”8—deliberately invoking Hannah Arendt’s notion—plays a key role in this new solemn “music of the spheres”: geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and cryosphere. So, it is time to link ice and snow as historical categories with the period of the Great Acceleration, which in turn almost precisely coincides with the Cold War, both starting right after World War II and coinciding with the rise of “the environment” as a seminal conceptual tool for assembling global attention, knowledge, and action on the increasingly problematic human-nature relationship.9 We change our language as a sign of our changing perception of the world and where it is going. And as we do this, we start paying more and more attention to ice and snow. This is no coincidence, and I shall in this chapter make an attempt to answer the question why this is so.

An Old Language of Ice and Snow As “ice” and “snow” are now embarking on a new career as words and concepts, it mustn’t be forgotten that there is a somewhat older literature on ice and snow and things people did with it, such as skiing, trekking, building, or using its aesthetic properties—for example Ruth Kirk’s vivid pictorial album Snow from 1977, with magnificent black-and-white photographs from the Californian Sierras, or Bernard Mergen’s kaleidoscopic, poetic, imaginative Snow in America from 1997.10 Both of these have an American focus, but you could as well get your literature from other parts of the world. The Australian poet Les Murray published a book of essays where he tells of the first skiing

22 Sverker Sörlin

club in Australia (some claim in the world). It was started in the Kiandra gold fields in the Snowy Mountains and its members’ skis made from the wood of mountain ash trees as they organized their first competition in 1862.11 Of course, they were Norwegians, and Scandinavia looms large in the narrative of ice and snow. One of the early Norwegian skiers is closely linked to the kinds of histories we sometimes tell in the history of science and environment. Carl Bjerknes, a noted mathematician, was the father of successful engineer Ernst Bjerknes, who ended second in the first Holmenkollen skiing games in 1888, and of Vilhelm Bjerknes, who founded the famous Norwegian school of meteorology and invented the Arctic front concept, so masterfully researched by Robert Marc Friedman (1989), and whose son in turn, Jacob Bjerknes, as a faculty member at UCLA, became a central figure in the research of the impact of a changing climate on snow and ice during the Cold War.12 The kinds of knowledge that have been employed about snow and ice cover a range of cultures and knowledge regimes. The late Yngve Ryd, a Swedish ethnologist who passed away in 2012, wrote a book on Sami words for snow. His chief informants were Anna and Johan Rassa, an old couple in Jokkmokk, a center of Sami society in Lapland. There are some 350 words covered in the book, which tell everything about the properties and qualities of snow in different seasons and elevations, sizes and shapes and speeds, and what sorts of sensations it gives to humans and reindeer and dogs. The elderly Rassas were more than eighty years old when the book was issued.13 This kind of information is also why we start to see the limitations of our existing knowledge. Previous research on ice and snow has, with the exception of people like Yngve Ryd or cultural historians like Kirk or Mergen, been by and large about the natural science of ice. Glaciers and snowfields have been conceived largely as extensions upward of the crust of the earth and as components of the complex physical chemistry of the earth and its climate. Gerald Seligman’s pioneering work Snow Structure and Ski Fields from 1936 demonstrated that even the systematic natural science knowledge of these phenomena does not go back very far.14 Seligman, who was an articulate enemy of Dobrowolski’s cryosphere concept, covered the minute details of the smallest snow crystals—photographed by Seligman himself with equipment from his London supplier—to the major fluctuations of the largest glacier systems and the relations of glaciers to climate fluctuations, as well as the mechanics and dynamics of avalanches. When glaciology took a more firm institutional shape as an acknowledged sub-discipline of the geosciences, with the Journal of Glaciology (from 1947) as its key publication, it was in this tradition. More rarely did we see attempts to understand ice and snow as extensions of society into the geosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere, as arenas of culture and of human ingenuity.15

Cryo-history 23

Bringing People to the Ice This situation has changed decisively. The work by Mark Carey on climate change and Andean societies, In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers, makes the point very convincingly that there is an entire continent of work to be done on what snow and ice mean and have meant. His story is about glacier experts in the twentieth century, communities of carriers of knowledge and technologies, and how they interact with local communities who carry local knowledge. Carey demonstrates how there is a history of interaction between these knowledge traditions and an even longer history of local adaptation to glaciers.16 Further north in the Americas, Julie Cruikshank’s work shows that in the analysis of glaciers there is a history of encounters of knowledge traditions that goes back for centuries, in her case in the Pacific Northwest, where the Tlingit met with French Enlightenment scientists, Lapérouse and his mathematics-infused experts.17 Some of the historical work has surfaced as a subcategory of the history of geology, geography, or natural history, but again only rarely did snow and ice as categories in this work become fully historicized. The framing story was, typically, the role of glaciers in the discovery of terrestrial time, and especially the discovery of the Ice Age, Karl Schimper’s concept. Since the groundbreaking work by two European scholars, Jean de Charpentier (1786–1855), a German-Swiss mining engineer who developed his first ideas of glacial retreat in the 1820s and 1830s, and Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), a Swiss geologist who spent his later career at Harvard University and published Études sur les glaciers (Studies of glaciers) in (1840), commonly seen as the breakthrough of Ice Age theory, glaciology as a scientific enterprise was closely related to the understanding of geographical change in historic times. Glaciers told stories, if not of deep time, at least of a time that was deep enough to make it relevant for a whole range of scientific disciplines.18 Glaciers played a role in national narratives in several countries, from the nineteenth century, often with science in a key role. In Scandinavia, natural historian Georg Wahlenberg, a post-Linnaean botanist and plant geographer at Uppsala, visited several glaciers on his extensive travels in Lapland and regarded them as indicators of the virtues of the hardening Nordic climate in the very first decade of the nineteenth century.19 This was an early interest in glaciers and has been mostly overlooked, probably because he had no idea of ice as a link to terrestrial deep time. Climate control was a preoccupation of imperial Austria and included the study of glacial motion.20 Glaciers played a role in “Victorian imagination” in the United Kingdom.21 The Antarctic ice served as a counterpoint to the red interior in the national lore of Australia.22 Most, if not all, the earlier attempts to write historically about snow and ice, say before the foundation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

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(IPCC) in 1988 and the acknowledgment of climate as a major global issue, lacked the framing narrative that we now have: that the loss of glaciers and the shrinking annual snow cover signify a major historical event in and of itself, that they herald even deeper changes in the future, and that these changes are not limited to the ice-clad zones but will affect the entire world. It may be worthwhile to compare the interest in oceans, deserts, or the tropical rainforest, where significant historical work has more of a lineage, in particular within imperial and colonial history. Snow and ice have indeed been studied, for example as a special aspect of transportation, or as aid or obstacle in war. In recent years it has occasionally been understood as historically important, for example as a key element in the rise of the Arctic as a theater of war in the immediate post–World War II decades.23 Some of this latter work has appeared in “Special Feature: Arctic Science” of the Journal of Historical Geography (2014), which features several articles about historical aspects of ice. Also, a recent book by Janet MartinNielsen problematizes science work on ice in Greenland’s Eismitte; her work falls within the larger framework of study of the Greenland ice cap conducted at the University of Aarhus. Related work for Canada and the United States has been conducted by Matthew Farish.24 Other work picks up on the local popular perceptions and practices of or on ice. In this category we find notably work by anthropologists such as Julie Cruikshank’s, on the relation to glaciers among the Tlingit in the Pacific Northwest.25 Several broad interdisciplinary projects were conducted as parts of the International Polar Year 2007–9 and have continued since. One of them, SIKU, involved both Arctic residents in Greenland and northeastern Canada and anthropologists in a very hands-on effort including common fieldwork and resulted in a diverse volume entitled Knowing Our Ice26 and in a magnificent recent volume, The Meaning of Ice.27 Interesting recent work is also assembled in a volume edited by anthropologists Kirsten Hastrup and Morten Skrydstrup, The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature. It is mostly Hastrup’s chapter on the navigational practices of Inuit in northwestern Greenland, Skrydstrup’s report from his fieldwork on ice core drilling, also in Greenland, and Hildegard Diemberger’s paper on predictability of the snow and ice region of Tibet that deal fully with ice, but throughout the book glaciers and sea ice are discussed.28 While this slightly personal sample is already a lot, there is more work out there, and more still is coming. But, considering the contemporary debates about anthropogenic climate change, we must draw the conclusion that we have still been too modest. The histories we tell of ice and snow and the growing interest in them are momentous. They heralded more than I imagined. This is probably why we are now seeing this surging interest in ice and snow and the quest for a new integrative narrative of humans and the rapidly chang-

Cryo-history 25

ing environment—indeed in cryo-history—as a historiography emerging in our time, because it has acquired relevance and a stature that these pursuits did not carry in the past.29

The Sea Ice Minimum as an Event The evidence that ice and snow are becoming increasingly important not just as topics of historical analysis but for the perception of a planetary condition seems to me now broad and manifold. But if we are looking for a particular moment that, albeit symbolically, may serve as a sign that the attention was turning around—a crystallization point, to use the language of ice formation—I suggest we should pay attention to the 2007 Arctic sea ice minimum. In October of that year, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) declared that the melting season had ended and that a record low had been reached at a level that was not only far below the average of the last decades of observing sea ice, but also way below the lowest coverage area that any models had predicted.30 It was at the beginning of the International Polar Year, and the news came just as a European Science Foundation conference on climate change had started. I was among the participants, and the buzz was enormous. Speakers changed their talks, images were quickly fetched from the web to illustrate the phenomenon, and a discussion immediately broke out on whether we could trust the models and the predictions when they seemingly had so grossly underestimated the forces of change.31 At the conference there was concern but also some kind of paradoxical excitement, as if this could prove climate change to be more true, in a more forceful way, and at a higher pace than the barely visible day-to-day change that could only be reported in illusive statistics. The already ongoing speculations of an ice-free Arctic—an old trope32—immediately intensified. How could these sentiments be understood? It may be useful to think of the sea ice minimum as more than just a neutral geophysical observation. It was rather an event, since it caught massive attention and captured the imagination of many people. It has also become a reference point, and it acquired its own icons. The data showed that the extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean had reached 23 percent below previously recorded low levels (2005) and 39 percent below the average over the period 1979–2000.33 Instead it has been suggested that it can be construed as a “media event,” a special moment, or “happening” that draws significant attention in various forms and outlets of media. The concept was originally developed by Elihu Katz (1980), who emphasized its national character, but with globalizing media and societies, media events have tended increasingly to become transnational, even global, and they tend

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also not to be isolated to politics in the limited sense.34 They occur around major sports and entertainment occasions, celebrity deaths (the Kennedy assassination, the Diana phenomenon), and natural and environmental disasters (the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005). For a few days in October 2007 eventization centered on ice. In a thorough analysis Miyase Christensen, Annika Nilsson, and Nina Wormbs have suggested that the optimal framing of the sea ice minima, in 2007 and also an ensuing one in 2012, is to see them as constituting minor events, or “moments” in the larger meta-event of climate change. The latter, grand and global as it truly is, has many media sites where it can be visualized, mediatized, and thus manifested, beyond (the weak and vague) personal experience that the ordinary citizen has of climate change and beyond pale statistics. The melting Greenland ice cap at Illulissat is one such example, and the summer ice-free Arctic Ocean is another.35 The sea ice minimum 2007 came precisely at a moment when climate change was assuming a prime position on the global political agenda. Why was it perceived as so significant? It was not only the recorded ice-cover low that was important; at least as important was the fact that the minimum grossly exceeded almost all the modeled expectations. Models had started to become extremely interesting. Paul Edwards and others had already many years earlier started working on the roles of climate models, how they are constructed, and how they are used both within science and in a wider social realm.36 In his synthetic volume, A Vast Machine, he argues that we could understand modeling as a large technological system (LTS), referring to the concept by Thomas P. Hughes, and that we should pay attention to the infrastructural dimensions of this enterprise.37 But even this carefully researched book somehow overlooks the fact that the models, as they predict, also pave the way for mediated events that can only happen in relation to the anticipated, almost preordained as it were, reality that the models themselves have produced by providing them with their fateful context. The record low was of course a low, and it was sensational, but even more sensational was the fact that it was a low that was lower than the lowest modeled low. That was the scary news. It was more than a variation, it was ominous, it was nature speaking back: “You think you can model my change? I could change even faster!” Indeed, there was a scientific language for that as well: that of “tipping points,” “cascades,” and linked processes of change. A revolutionary worldview, rather than one of gradual change, an old trope indeed in the geosciences with roots to Georges Cuvier and beyond, but quite unusual when it came to the models that we had just started to learn that we should trust and that had started to circulate not only scientifically but in popular notions aided by books such as Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (2000).

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But if one looks carefully, there were some models that had extreme values that allowed for the 2007 minimum, not as an average but as a single-year value. This was also what it was: a single-year event; nobody knew at the time what the following years would bring. The obvious thing to do would have been to wait and see if it was repeated. But such detailed and boring remarks were drowned out by the hype and speculation. Furthermore, as already noted, it took only until 2012 for the 2007 low to be broken yet again. The information on the minimum was not reaching the large audiences, since it was an entirely different narrative that was taking shape and that formed the core of the event, that gave it the event-like character: that here was cryo-history in the making. The ice was playing the role of the ominous, yet objective, truth teller from the ends of the earth, at the same time re-invoking yet another trope with a venerable history, namely that truths of global significance arrive from distant core geographies: the heart of Africa, the steppes of Asia—or the cold void of the polar regions. When Big Narrative is out, disturbing details are not always visible on the front stage. Events like clarity as much as they need narrative—preferably with a certain, slight ring of environmental determinism to it, although of course this time it is the humans that are behind it all, isn’t it? The politics of the minimum was also interesting. A lot of groups, paradoxically including the modelers and scientists who had failed in their predictions, had a lot to gain from high attention on the Arctic. The fact they were proved at least somewhat wrong could be interpreted to mean that they needed to work even harder to get models that could measure up to the alarming level of the planet itself. Arctic residents, concerned citizens, and political actors such as the European Union also could gain from the attention. Perhaps even the oil and resource industries and the Arctic coastal states—that is, both those who had an interest in stopping oil and gas activities in the Arctic Sea and those who wanted them to continue had stakes in a record sea ice minimum.

Slow Ice, Slow Glaciers Against this reading of a contemporary event, which happened rapidly, as a “tipping point” of attention and speculation, I wish to draw a contrast with the more long-term and considerably slower prehistory of sea ice and glaciers as climate indicators—those ups and downs of ice and snow that were denied revolutionary potential. The truth is that sea ice minima have appeared earlier, but in more marginal circumstances and sometimes as predictions, or historical hypotheses, rather than as empirical facts. In the 1950s an ice-free Arctic Ocean was predicted by

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the year 2000 by American and Canadian scientists, and the trope circulated fairly widely in the news media.38 In the 1920s scientists saw reason to believe that the Arctic Ocean had been free of ice for long periods in the past. Glaciers started to be used as climate indicators in the nineteenth century, and a broad and institutionally organized cryospheric research took shape in the twentieth century.39 Climate change may, in retrospect, have appeared obvious, but such an interpretation was in the past rarely put forward as a serious alternative for the immediate future on the human timescale of decades, generations, or centuries. Instead, it was not until the final decades of the century, and for a global audience only in the early years of the twenty-first, that this happened, and then it happened rapidly. This should interest us, precisely because an icefree Arctic was not turned into an event. Just to demonstrate one example of this earlier work we could look at Swedish oceanographer Otto Pettersson’s theory, proposed in a series of papers of long-term variations in the circulation of the oceans caused by changes in “tide-generating force,” which in turn varies with the declination and proximity of the sun and moon to the earth and reaches maxima every seventeen hundred years, roughly 3500 BC, 1900 BC, 250 BC, and AD 1433 (a remarkably exact date).40 We must here leave aside the details of Pettersson’s analysis and just focus on what he has to say about an ice-free Arctic Ocean. According to Pettersson, an ice-free Arctic would occur repeatedly during periods of climate optima when tidal forces brought more warm water into the Arctic. In essence, breaking these long ice-free periods was not easy. British meteorologist and climatologist C. E. P. Brooks’s rendering of Pettersson’s theory as late as in his 1949 edition of Climate through the Ages (originally published in 1926) is totally open to the thought that the Arctic Sea was free of ice for very long periods of time, hundreds of years. Brooks writes, “The final stage [of a long period of ice-free conditions] came about 500 BC when for some reason the Arctic ice-cap last became firmly established, apparently very extensively, after a few centuries of heat and drought.” As for reasons, he speculates about sunspots or volcanic activity, and of course he has just referred to Pettersson’s tidal forces. He connects existence of an ice cap also to storminess in Europe in quite sophisticated ways. But by and large one gets the impression that still at the middle of the twentieth century you could come away with quite wide-ranging statements about ocean ice.41 But the overriding message is of course that with ideas like these, putting enormous explanatory pressure on astronomical explanations, the idea that human climate forcing should play any role is exotic. At about the same time as the second edition of his book was published, Brooks also published repeatedly on the total incredibility of Guy Stewart Callendar’s climate-forcing hypothesis first presented in his famous 1938 paper. Brooks says:

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This argument [Callendar’s] has rather broken down in the last few years, however, for the rise of temperature seems to have reached its crest and have given rise to a fall. The possibility that changes in the amount of carbon dioxide have been responsible for some small part of the climatic changes of geological time seems to remain open however.

In other sources his skepticism to human climate forcing is even more outspoken, and in this he shared the majority view among scientists around 1950. My take on Pettersson and Brooks—and they were not the only ones interested in Arctic ice conditions—is that this understanding, full of earth history theories and empirical findings about the past presence and non-presence of ice in the Arctic Ocean, is still evidence of the contrary to what I refer to as cryo-history: that ice was not yet made part of human history. The ice was an extension not of humans but of the earth and its caprices, and possibly the earth system (before that term of course). Ice was a natural category altogether, not a social one. Glaciers demonstrate a parallel pattern useful for historical research into the science politics of climate change. Glaciers as physical phenomena fascinated nineteenth-century British scientists like John Tyndall and Charles Darwin42 and were masterfully interpreted as agents of change by Alpine geologists. Glaciers were also of much interest in the Scandinavian countries, where they were chiefly regarded as a kind of nature’s ruins, the remnants left of the great Ice Age, which had formed and molded the Scandinavian peninsula and created the basic parameters of human settlement through soils, moraines, and land elevation, and laying the foundations for agriculture and even forestry with U-shaped river valleys good for timber floating. As scientific as this glacial research was, it had a somewhat providential interpretation: the economic success of, in this case, Sweden could be attributed to its glacial past.43 Quite naturally glaciers became patriotic assets, which enhanced their scientific interest and vice versa.44 Axel Hamberg, who spent a lifelong career researching the glaciers of the Sarek massif in remote Lapland, could quite readily rely on royal and parliamentary support for his massive publications and pictorial representations of glaciers. Tourism and alpinism reinforced this trend. But beyond the mapping and the morphology there was really quite little work on the dynamics of glaciers. But there was of course the big enigma: Why had there been a big ice cap and now only scattered glaciers remained? Why had there been an Ice Age at all, and why had the ice retreated? The question was addressed famously by the physical chemist Svante Arrhenius, but it was a geologist, Arvid Högbom, who was himself from the north and had done fieldwork in the glacial regions like most geologists, who had originally formulated the question and aroused Arrhenius’s interest. Carbon

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dioxide was a hypothesis in the quest for an overarching explanation as to why Ice Ages could happen and why one could not rule out the possibility that it could happen again. Arrhenius indeed suggested increased human production of carbon dioxide to prevent this from happening.45

Sea Ice and Strategic Concerns Work on sea ice was particularly active at an early stage in Russia and the Soviet Union. Given her several thousand kilometers of Polar Sea coast and a long-standing interest in a Northeast Passage, sea ice was always a major concern. From around 1900 Russians started collecting sea ice data in a systematic way, and a long series of expeditions into polar waters were conducted, aided by world-leading ice-breaking technology, which remained a central priority for the Bolshevik government. In the 1920s the USSR formed major research institutes for polar science in both Leningrad and Moscow. Soviet scientists collaborated intensely with Norwegian colleagues, based in the lively maritime and oceanographic research community in Bergen,46 and Norway turned out to be another significant provider of knowledge and data about sea ice. This was based on the work of Fridtjof Nansen with the Fram expedition in the 1890s and the subsequent Maud expedition in the 1920s. In the latter, the work on sea ice was led by Harald Ulrik Sverdrup, who, as director of Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla, California, from 1937 to 1948, and then as the first director of the Norwegian Polar Institute from 1948, rose to become a major actor in Arctic science planning and, subsequently, Cold War science politics.47 His main work was on sea ice, but he also collaborated with Swedish geographer Hans Ahlmann on terrestrial glaciers in Svalbard in the 1930s. Thus, through widely networked science politics actors and school builders, such as Ahlmann and Sverdrup, and their colleagues in the earth and marine sciences in Bergen, for example Björn Helland-Hansen, Scandinavian ice research served as a nexus of knowledge brokering between both the Western sphere and the Soviet Union.48 This, however, does not diminish the fact that the scientific study of sea ice in the twentieth century reflects distinct national and economic interests,49 as so much polar science does.50 If Russia/USSR took the lead, followed by the Norwegians, with scattered contributions from other countries,51 the Cold War saw a distinct rise of interest in Arctic ice research in the United States and Canada. This was linked to strategic considerations and the US-founded Arctic-related research labs and institutes related to all major branches of the armed forces in Alaska and elsewhere. The US Navy established the Arctic Research Laboratory in Barrow, at the northwest tip of Alaska, to pursue “basic research in the Arctic.” Separately the US Air Force created the Arctic Aero-

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medical Laboratory at Ladd Air Force Base outside Fairbanks, Alaska, with a mission to aid operations in hostile environments (including investigations of acclimatization and survival as well as physiological studies of indigenous Alaskans). These included outsourced labs in Europe (one in the north of Sweden52) and massive research efforts on the Greenland ice cap.53 The strategic and military component of sea ice research was significant even before the Cold War, and charts and statistics were compiled by many countries.54 In the Cold War, sea ice research was also linked to ideas of climate change and predictions, and speculations of a seasonally ice-free polar sea started to appear.55 This was based on geographical lore, which in turn entered modern sea ice science.56

A Career in Cryo-science At the beginning of this chapter I asked the question, why cryo-history? The answer so far has been mainly a review of themes and topics in recent historiography and how they are linked to contemporary concerns such as climate change and the Anthropocene. I have indicated that cryo-history can be seen as part of the emerging environmental humanities. The scale has mostly been large. In reality, however, ice is a scalable concept, and cryo-history works well from the individual and local scales all the way up to the planetary and the atmospheric, and from these back down again to effects on the ground, where, as in our time, ice is melting and livelihoods are affected. Agency will be found at all levels of this scaling: among hunting Inuit and Sami in the Arctic, among imperial surveyors and geologists in Austria and the Himalayas, in national environmental and climate policies, and among communities of modelers and climate scientists. On the largest scale, there is agency in the ice and snow themselves, just as there is in winds and clouds.57 Indeed, several scales could be seen through the microcosm of one individual actor. How the story of ice and snow materialized in one scientific life, before the new framing of cryo-history had happened, I would like to briefly illustrate with a summary presentation of the climate science conducted by Stockholm geographer Hans Ahlmann. He was later to become a leading name in glaciology and climate change theory. In the 1910s and 1920s he started his long period of work in Scandinavia in the North Atlantic with some fairly vague notions of glacial dynamics. He followed in the wake of predecessors like Axel Hamberg, Fredrik Svenonius, and other Swedish glaciologists, and he was determined to find out more about the behavior of glaciers. When he left his active research career in 1950 to assume the post as Sweden’s ambassador to Oslo, he had investigated sites around Scandinavia, Spitsbergen, Iceland, and Greenland and had built a permanent glacial observatory in Swedish

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Lapland. He became “Professor Ice” in the media and personified the kind of natural science history of ice that until recently was the only one that existed.58 Throughout his career Ahlmann’s local data collection from individual glaciers was linked to wider issues of climate change and its possible causes— rather than their effects, which he considered basically benevolent. His work coincided almost perfectly with the period of North Atlantic warming that caused quite a discussion at the time and was very rarely, if at all, interpreted as caused by any human climate forcing. Instead, Ahlmann came to play an influential role as a descriptor of the warming phenomena and also to some extent exerted a brief moment of influence as to the explanatory factors. Already in the 1920s, during his work in Norway and even more on the Lapland Kårsa Jökel (jökel being an ancient term for glacier in Norse languages) in Sweden, Ahlmann found solid empirical evidence of glaciers shrinking in correlation to the warming trend. He did not rush to tout this news. He was a cautious man and played his cards carefully, busy also with ongoing other lines of research in Libya and Rome and on the growth of the urban region of Stockholm. But in the late 1930s he had evidence enough from the entire North Atlantic region, and he could present his theory of polar warming based on glaciers as indicators. As a small celebrity on the fugitive element, he went on lecture tours—for example, in the United States in 1947 and 1952—and wrote news articles and gave interviews about the warming and the enigma it presented. The media coverage was large, in ways that was not totally dissimilar from ice events in recent years. But there was a significant difference: Ahlmann would not buy into any human climate forcing theory. His own explanations, which he admitted he could not really draw to any binding confirmation, was that for unexplained reasons warmer air was transported from the equatorial regions and caused warming. The Arctic amplification—a later term—was tremendous, and the annual average temperatures in Spitsbergen grew with as much as seven degrees Celsius. In the self-imagery of glaciologists who count themselves as followers of the Ahlmann tradition, or school, of whom I have interviewed several,59 there is no doubt that these are scientists who privilege their empirical observations. They provide records of historical climate. The glaciological research station at Tarfala in northernmost Lapland, which Ahlmann founded in 1946 with some of his students, prides itself on having the longest series of observations of a glacier anywhere. By now they are of course adherents of the prevalent orthodoxy, but not long ago there was still an Ahlmannian skepticism around the site. The Tarfala site and its records have, fairly late, been drawn into cryohistory and are now one of its providers of basic facts, raw materials, although as physical geographers they did not work much on societies and the people.60 They also provide quite a bit of the raw materials that humanists and

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social scientists need as we now go about doing cryo-history, even of the Cold War.

Through the Looking Glass of Time Ahlmann rose to become a political figure of sorts. Not only was he a diplomat in his later years, he had increasingly played a role as science adviser and as a networker among scientists and politicians in the Scandinavian countries. He saw Arctic research as a bridge-building activity between the Soviet Union and the Western countries. He had scientific reasons for this, as he could expand his pool of data, but his aims were also political. He was a cofounder of the Swedish friendship society with the USSR in 1934, also the year of his first visit to the country. He returned several times, importantly in 1945 to be part of the Academy of Sciences 220th anniversary celebrations, also a tribute to the Soviet victory in the war. He learned a lot about Soviet Arctic science and was quite impressed. At the same time he had big plans for extended work on the Greenland ice cap and on Antarctica. He consistently supported Norwegian positions and interests, opposed the Germans, and was sometimes skeptical of American interests, for example in Iceland. He wanted the Danes to join the Scandinavian camp and to host a major Nordic research effort on Greenland. When he learned that they cared more for their own colony and even ventured to both join NATO and get close with the United States in Thule, he was disappointed. He cultivated intensely his Icelandic connections, not least through his student Sigurdur Thorarinnsson, who was not only state geologist on Iceland but also a literary figure who translated between Icelandic and Swedish and, like Ahlmann, was skeptical toward the Americans and their bases. Nonetheless Ahlmann went to the Pentagon and advised the Americans if need be. The US trip in 1947 was planned by his friends and colleagues Carl-Gustaf Rossby and Harald Ulrik Sverdrup, both centrally located in the science of the American war effort. Why, precisely, this need to speak to the American military as the Cold War was just coming up? Glacial work was for Ahlmann not just an issue of climate dynamics, it was also a “cryo-arena,” to bring countries and politics together to favor Nordic cooperation, to sustain a unity that had been broken by unfavorable politics. Glaciers were, among other things, a special matter that bound scattered lands in the North Atlantic together. Glaciers were a political category. They belonged in the Cold War as part of an attempt to create an alternative to the Cold War dualism, one that failed, but nonetheless. In this sense Ahlmann and his school of glaciology form a key chapter of the kind of cryo-history that starts to unfold in our time, with empirical exam-

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ples from multiple times and geographies. These scientists and their field assistants in many countries of local people, Icelandic farmers and Lapland Sami of both sexes, are Northern Hemisphere counterparts to the people Mark Carey found in his Andean pursuits. When we study them today we can see them as belonging in a cryo-history that can be subsumed under a wider problematique of climate change and humanity in a new human condition under the Anthropocene. But it is one of the ironies of history that Ahlmann himself did not draw any such conclusion. He kept his glaciers squarely outside the human realm. They obeyed nature’s laws, they did not listen to any commands from human civilization—their dynamics were not anthropogenic. This means that there were many dimensions of the waning snow and ice that Ahlmann was not aware of, indeed could not see. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, in times of swiftly changing perception of global climate, the 2007 sea ice minimum stands out not as merely a scientific fact. It comes forth as a tipping point event—but with what long-term effect? What time does it take for ice to melt compared to the time required for basic societal and cultural perceptions to change? Will we be able to change, or is climate change also a normalizing phenomenon, with a tendency to absorb variation and vulnerability and present itself as normality? Ultimately, we will do well to ask questions about temporality. What happens when we are looking at snow and ice through a looking glass of time? What do we see? Through the looking glass we may, as did once an Oxford mathematician who wrote about a little girl called Alice, find a wonderland of forgotten ideas—and of hopes and deceptions. And we will find ruins, not just of a bygone Ice Age but of failed policies, a grotesque version of a rationality that we professed but seemed unable to practice. But we may perhaps also find stories of ethics, responsibility, and global and local connections, and we may uncover new ways to understand the world we live in—and ourselves.

How We Tell the World As I have argued in this chapter, we are already pursuing a broader historical reading of ice and snow—a cryo-history—that speaks to major issues of environmental and global change, social and planetary temporalities, and the geopolitics of climate. This means that we can tell stories that will form part of a social science and humanities understanding of what has come to be called the era of the Anthropocene, where environmental and climate change is more deeply embedded in the understanding of history—and the future.61 We can look back at more than a century of attempts to enroll ice as an object of study in a range of science fields and an established tradition of re-

Cryo-history 35

searching the records of changes in the physical properties of ice. In this tradition new work is constantly produced and is becoming ever more refined.62 But the new work is the work that unites the physical history of planetary and local change with the histories of people, places, societies, economies, values, knowledge, art, literature—how we tell the world as historians and sensemaking humans. If there was once “eternity in a grain of sand,” we now try to find some of the main truths about ourselves in crystals of ice. Much of this work can be seen as part of a broader movement toward the environmental humanities. This emerging field, which has grown rapidly in the last decade, puts the human experience at the center of environmental and climate change. Ice and snow make up some of its core elements. They fit the environmental humanities bill ideally: they are fugitive and vulnerable, they link the human and the natural worlds, they link the scientific and the vernacular, and they draw a lot of attention from news, media, and the arts. The environmental humanities correspond in the human sciences to what earth systems science represents in the sciences. At the core of both the sciences and the humanities is environmental change. They are both cognizant of the tremendous change in multiple dimensions that marked the Cold War and have been termed the Great Acceleration, which in turn is a fundamental understanding of the Anthropocene. This should be emphasized, since it links snow and ice even further to the Cold War. These elements have been a part of the human experience for eons of time, but they have become acute and important for societies around the world, and central to world events, only in the past few generations. Their “natural history” is a couple of centuries old. Their historiographical career is so recent that we almost have no word for what we are talking about—hence cryo-history and this attempt to contextualize it as a dimension of the environmental humanities.

Sverker Sörlin is professor of environmental history in the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and a cofounder with Nina Wormbs of the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory. His research is focused on the role of knowledge in environmentally informed modern societies and in research and innovation policies, where he also serves as a policy analyst and adviser. Current research interests include the science politics of climate change, especially as seen through the history of the environmental field sciences, including glaciology, and the formation of environmental expertise. Among his edited or coedited books with themes covering ice and snow are Narrating the Arctic (Science History Publications, 2002), Northscapes: History, Technology, and the Making of Northern Environments (University of British Columbia Press,

36 Sverker Sörlin

2013), and Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region (Ashgate, 2013). He is a coauthor, with Libby Robin and Paul Warde, of The Environment—A History of the Idea (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).

Notes 1. Mike Hulme, “Claiming and Adjudicating on Mt Kilimanjaro’s Shrinking Glaciers: Guy Callendar, Al Gore and Extended Peer Communities,” Science as Culture 19, no. 3 (September 2010). 2. Roger G. Barry, Jacek Jania, and Krzysztof Birkenmajer, “A. B. Dobrowolski—the First Cryospheric Scientist—and the Subsequent Development of Cryospheric Science,” History of Geo- and Space Sciences 2 (April 2011): 75–79. 3. Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Les époques de la nature (Paris: L’Imprimerie Royale, 1778), reprinted in The Epochs of Nature: Georges-Louis Leclerc, le Comte de Buffon, trans., ed., and comp. Jan Zalasiewicz, Anne-Sophie Milon, and Mateusz Zalasiewicz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018); Clarence J. Glacken, “Changing Ideas of the Habitable World,” in Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, ed. William L. Thomas, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956); Lucien Febvre, La Terre et l’Évolution humaine, trans. E. G. Mountford and J. H. Paxton (Paris: Renaissance du livre, 1922); reprint, A Geographical Introduction to History, The History of Civilization Series, 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 1932). 4. Robert Costanza, Lisa Graumlich, and Will Steffen, eds., Sustainability or Collapse: An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007). 5. Will Steffen et al., “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration,” Anthropocene Review 2 (2015). 6. Eileen Crist, “On the Poverty of Our Nomenclature,” Environmental Humanities 3 (2013); Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg, “The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative,” Anthropocene Review 1, no. 1 (2014). 7. Sverker Sörlin, “Environmental Humanities: Why Should Biologists Interested in the Environment Take the Humanities Seriously?,” BioScience 62, no. 9 (September 2012): 788–89; Sverker Sörlin, “Scaling the Planetary Humanities: Environmental Globalization and the Arctic,” in The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, ed. U. K. Heise, J. Christensen, and M. Niemann (London: Routledge, 2017), 433–42; R. S. Emmett and D. E. Nye, The Environmental Humanities: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017). 8. Gísli Pálsson et al., “Reconceptualizing the ‘Anthropos’ in the Anthropocene: Integrating the Social Sciences and Humanities in Global Environmental Change Research,” Environmental Science and Policy 28 (April 2013); cf. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “A Climate for History,” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 2 (2009). 9. Paul Warde and Sverker Sörlin, “Expertise for the Future: The Emergence of Environmental Prediction c.1920–1970,” in The Struggle for the Long Term in Transnational Science and Politics: Forging the Future, ed. Jenny Andersson and Egle Rindzeviciute (New York: Routledge, 2015); Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin, The Environment: A History of the Idea (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).

Cryo-history 37

10. Ruth Kirk, Snow (New York: Morrow Quill, 1977; 2nd ed., Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1998); with magnificent pictures from the Sierra Nevada, Bernard Mergen, Snow in America (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1997). 11. See also “Kiandra Snow Shoe Club,” Wikipedia, retrieved 1 October 2017 from https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiandra_Snow_Shoe_Club. 12. Thor Gotaas, Först i löypa: Historien om langrenn i Norge (Oslo: Dreyers, 2003). I came across the Bjerknes family connection, however indirect and incidental, between climate science and snow as the element of Scandinavian national culture as I myself wrote a modern narrative nonfiction ethnography of elite cross-country skiing in Norway and Sweden: Sverker Sörlin, Kroppens geni (Stockholm: Weyler, 2011; Norwegian trans., Oslo: Pax, 2011). 13. Yngve Ryd, Snö (Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 2001). 14. This is also visible in papers for this conference; see, e.g., Dania Achermann’s contribution to this volume, which, although noting eighteenth-century roots of avalanche research, specifies that the first designated snow laboratory was opened in Davos in 1934. 15. See, however, work on the formation of national identities of (a few) northern nations, e.g., Tor Bomann-Larsen, Den evige sne: En skihistorie om Norge (Oslo: Cappelen Damm, 1996); on snow and Norway or on ice as a fascinating element to be conquered or understood in the quest for the poles, see, e.g., Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1986); Francis Spufford, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). 16. Mark Carey, In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 17. Julie Cruikshank, Do Glaciers Listen? (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005). 18. M. J. S. Rudwick, Scenes from Deep Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Doug Macdougall, Frozen Earth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Christer Nordlund, “On Going Up in the World: Nation, Region, and the Land Elevation Debate in Sweden,” Annals of Science 58, no. 1 (2001). 19. Sverker Sörlin, Framtidslandet: Debatten om Norrland och naturresurserna under det industriella genombrottet (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1988). 20. Deborah Coen, “Climate and Circulation in Imperial Austria,” Journal of Modern History 82, no. 4 (December 2010). 21. U. K. Knoepflmacher and G. B. Tennyson, eds., Nature and the Victorian Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977). 22. Brigid Hains, The Ice and the Inland (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005). 23. Ronald E. Doel, “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA after 1945,” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003); Sverker Sörlin, “Narratives and Counter Narratives of Climate Change: North Atlantic Glaciology and Meteorology, ca 1930–1955,” Journal of Historical Geography 35, no. 2 (April 2009); Ronald E. Doel et al., “Strategic Arctic Science: National Interests in Building Natural Knowledge—Interwar Era through the Cold War,” Journal of Historical Geography 44 (April 2014). 24. See Janet Martin-Nielsen, Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Politics at the Center of Greenland (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Matthew Farish,

38 Sverker Sörlin

25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30.

“Creating Cold War Climates: The Laboratories of American Globalism,” in Environmental Histories of the Cold War, ed. John R. McNeill and Corinna R. Unger (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Matthew Farish, “The Lab and the Land: Overcoming the Arctic in Cold War Alaska,” Isis 104, no. 1 (March 2013). Cruikshank, Do Glaciers Listen? Igor Krupnik et al., eds., SIKU: Knowing Our Ice (New York: Springer, 2010). Shari F. Gearheard et al., eds., The Meaning of Ice (Calgary: International Polar Institute, 2013). Kirsten Hastrup, “Anticipation on Thin Ice: Diagrammatic Reasoning,” in The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature, ed. K. Hastrup and M. Skrydstrup (New York: Routledge, 2013); Morten Skrydstrup, “Modelling Ice: A Field Diary of Anticipation on the Greenland Ice Sheet,” in The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature, ed. K. Hastrup and M. Skrydstrup (New York, Routledge, 2013); Hildegard Diemberger, “Deciding the Future in the Land of Snow: Tibet as an Arena for Conflicting Forms of Knowledge and Policy,” in The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature, ed. K. Hastrup and M. Skrydstrup (New York: Routledge, 2013). A brief digression here, to avoid doubt: the term has been used. And since one can’t propose something that already exists, I wish to point out that the term “Cryo History” (when I first started using it in 2010–11) had, to my knowledge, only been known in the context of cold technologies to repair, restore, or rejuvenate metals and tools. There were firms for that in Germany, Japan, and the United States, at the least, and there were labs. They use advanced physics. There is also a certain biological hinge to the concept. On the University of Alberta website I found this (in January 2011): “’We like to meet at the end of January to filter out the people who are not really serious about cryobiology,’ joked Locksley McGann, professor in the University of Alberta Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, on the first day of a conference hosted by the university called Extreme Cryo 2008: 100 Years in the Cold.” Cryo-history in this particular context means the forty years since the first low-temperature preservation of kidneys and other organs for transplantation. But I have found no evidence that professional historians have engaged with the term. This is, again, until I proposed it in my keynote talk at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich on 27 January 2011. Not much seems to be out there several years later, except a few papers that I wrote myself, such as Sverker Sörlin, “Cryo-history: Exploring Ice as Indicator of Change in Northern Environments and Societies,” American Historical Association, 3 January 2014; Sverker Sörlin, “Cryo-history: Ice and the Emerging Arctic Humanities,” in The New Arctic, ed. B. Evengard, J. N. Larsen, and Ø. Paasche (New York: Springer, 2015); Sverker Sörlin, “Do Glaciers Speak? The Political Aesthetics of Vo/ice,” in Methodological Challenges in Nature-Culture and Environmental History Research, ed. S. Rutherford, A. Sandberg, and J. Thorpe (New York: Routledge, 2016). “Arctic Sea Ice Falls to Third-Lowest Extent; Downward Trend Persists,” National Snow & Ice Data Center, 4 April 2010. See also N. Wormbs et al., “Bellwether, Exceptionalism, and Other Tropes: Political Coproduction of Arctic Climate Modeling,” in Cultures of Prediction, ed. M. Heymann, G. Gramelsberger, and M. Mahony (New York: Routledge, 2017).

Cryo-history 39

31. I happened to be chair of the Swedish National Committee for the International Polar Year 2007–9, and I was also a member of the science committee for the European Science Foundation conference, held south of Stockholm, which assembled scientists and policy makers from around Europe and beyond. 32. J. K. Wright, “The Open Polar Sea,” Geographical Review 43, no. 3 (July 1953); S. Sörlin and J. Lajus, “An Ice Free Arctic Sea? The Science of Sea Ice and Its Interests,” in Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change, ed. M. Christensen, A. E. Nilsson, and N. Wormbs (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 33. “Arctic Sea Ice Shatters All Previous Record Lows,” National Snow & Ice Data Center, 1 October 2007. 34. Elihu Katz, “Media Events: The Sense of Occasion,” Studies in Visual Anthropology 6, no. 3 (1980): 84–89; Nick Couldry, Andreas Hepp, and Friedrich Krotz, eds., Media Events in a Global Age (New York: Routledge, 2009). 35. Miyase Christensen, Annika E. Nilsson, and Nina Wormbs, “Globalization, Climate Change and the Media: An Introduction,” in Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change, ed. M. Christensen, A. Nilsson, and N. Wormbs (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 36. Clark A. Miller and Paul N. Edwards, eds., Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). 37. P. N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010). 38. Doel et al., “Strategic Arctic Science,” 70. 39. The word “cryosphere” itself derives from the Ancient Greek word κρύος (cryos, meaning “cold,” “frost,” or “ice”) and collectively describes the portions of the earth’s surface where water is in solid form, including sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets, and frozen ground (which includes permafrost). “Cryosphere,” Wikipedia, retrieved 1 October 2017 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryosphere. 40. Otto Pettersson, “On the probable occurrence in the Atlantic current of variations periodical, and otherwise, and their bearing on meteorological and biological phenomena,” Rapports et Procès-Verbaux des Réunions de Conseil Permanent International pour l’Exploration de la Mer 42 (1905); Otto Pettersson, “Climatic variations in historic and prehistoric time,” Svenska hydrogr. biol. Kommissionens skrifter 5 (1914); Otto Pettersson, “Long periodical variations of the tide generating force,” Publication Circular Conseil Permanent International pour l’Exploration de la Mer 65 (1915). 41. C. E. P. Brooks, Climate through the Ages (New York: R. V. Coleman, 1926; 2nd rev. ed., New York: R. V. Coleman, 1949), 372. 42. Bruce Hevly, “The Heroic Science of Glacier Motion,” Osiris 11 (1995); Sandra Herbert, Charles Darwin, Geologist (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). 43. Sörlin, Framtidslandet, 262–72; Sverker Sörlin, “Rituals and Resources of Natural History: The North and the Arctic in Swedish Scientific Nationalism,” in Narrating the Arctic, ed. M. T. Bravo and S. Sörlin (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 2002). 44. Much the way Achermann’s contribution to this volume has shown was the case for snow in Switzerland and that Pey-Yi Chu has described for permafrost in the Soviet Union, suggested to cover half the area of the enormous country and which was given its own research institute in 1939. Pey-Yi Chu, “Mapping Permafrost Country: Creat-

40 Sverker Sörlin

45.

46.

47. 48.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53.

54. 55.

56. 57. 58.

59. 60.

61.

ing an Environmental Object in the Soviet Union, 1920s–1940s,” Environmental History 20, no. 3 (2015). E. Crawford, Arrhenius: From Ionic Theory to the Greenhouse Effect (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1996); Sörlin, “Rituals and Resources of Natural History”; J. R. Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Julia Lajus, “Linking People through Fish: Science and Barents Sea Fish Resources in the Context of Russian–Scandinavian Relations,” in Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region: Norden beyond Borders, ed. Sverker Sörlin (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2013). Robert M. Friedman, The Expeditions of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup: Contexts for Shaping an Ocean Science (San Diego: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 1994). Julia Lajus and Sverker Sörlin, “Melting the Glacial Curtain: The Soft Politics of Scandinavian-Soviet Networks in the Geophysical Field Sciences between Two Polar Years, 1932/33–1957/58,” Journal of Historical Geography 44 (April 2014). Sörlin and Lajus, “An Ice Free Arctic Sea?” Doel et al., “Strategic Arctic Science.” E.g., Uppsala meteorologist Fredrik Malmgren, “On the Properties of Sea-Ice,” in Norwegian North Polar Expedition with the ‘Maud’ 1918–1925: Scientific Results 1, no. 5, ed. H. U. Sverdrup (Bergen: Geofysisk Institutt, 1927). Doel et al., “Strategic Arctic Science.” Matthias Heymann et al., “Exploring Greenland: Science and Technology in Cold War Settings,” Scientia Canadensis 33, no. 2 (2010); Martin-Nielsen, Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination; Ronald E. Doel, Kristine C. Harper, and Matthias Heymann, eds., Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Sörlin and Lajus, “An Ice Free Arctic Sea?” P. Siple, “Proposal for Consideration by the U.S. National Committee (UGY),” 1 May 1953, C1, USNC-IGY (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences Archives, 1953); Graham Rowley, Cold Comfort: My Love Affair with the Arctic (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996; 2nd ed., Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006). J. K. Wright, “The Open Polar Sea.” John Durham Peters, The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). A comprehensive presentation of Ahlmann’s career as a geographer and glacial scientist is available in Sverker Sörlin, “Ice Diplomacy and Climate Change: Hans Ahlmann and the Quest for a Nordic Region Beyond Borders,” in Science, Geoplitics and Culture in the Polar Region: Norden beyond Borders, ed. S. Sörlin (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2013). E.g., Sörlin, “Narratives and Counter Narratives of Climate Change.” Sverker Sörlin, “A Microgeography of Authority: Glaciology and Climate Change at the Tarfala Station, 1945–1980,” in Understanding Field Science Institutions, ed. H. Ekerholm, K. Grandin, C. Nordlund, and P. Schell (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2018), 255–85. Pálsson et al., “Reconceptualizing the ‘Anthropos’ in the Anthropocene.”

Cryo-history 41

62. Leonid Polyak et al., “History of Sea Ice in the Arctic,” Quaternary Science Reviews 29, no. 15–16 (July 2010).

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Cruikshank, Julie. Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005. Diemberger, Hildegard. “Deciding the Future in the Land of Snow: Tibet as an Arena for Conflicting Forms of Knowledge and Policy.” In The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature, edited by K. Hastrup and M. Skrydstrup, 100–27. New York: Routledge, 2013. Doel, Ronald E. “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA after 1945.” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003): 635–66. Doel, Ronald E., Robert Marc Friedman, Julia Lajus, Sverker Sörlin, and Urban Wråkberg. “Strategic Arctic Science: National Interests in Building Natural Knowledge—Interwar Era through the Cold War.” Journal of Historical Geography 44 (April 2014): 60–80. Doel, Ronald E., Kristine C. Harper, and Matthias Heymann, eds. Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Edwards, Paul N. A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. Emmett, Robert S., and David E. Nye. The Environmental Humanities—A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. Farish, Matthew. “Creating Cold War Climates: The Laboratories of American Globalism.” In Environmental Histories of the Cold War, edited by John R. McNeill and Corinna R. Unger, 51–84. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. ———. “The Lab and the Land: Overcoming the Arctic in Cold War Alaska.” Isis 104, no. 1 (March 2013): 1–29. Febvre, Lucien. La Terre et l’Évolution humaine. Translated by E. G. Mountford and J. H. Paxton. Paris: Renaissance du livre, 1922. Reprint, A Geographical Introduction to History, The History of Civilization Series, 2nd ed. New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 1932. Fleming, James R. Historical Perspectives on Climate Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Friedman, Robert M. Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the Construction of a Modern Meteorology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989. ———. The Expeditions of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup: Contexts for Shaping an Ocean Science. San Diego, CA: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 1994. Gearheard, Shari F., Lene Kielsen Holm, Henry Huntington, Joe Mello Leavitt, and Andrew R. Mahoney, eds. The Meaning of Ice: People and Sea Ice in Three Arctic Communities. Calgary: International Polar Institute, 2013. Glacken, Clarence J. “Changing Ideas of the Habitable World.” In Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, edited by William L. Thomas, Jr., 70–92. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1956. Gotaas, Thor. Först i löypa: Historien om langrenn i Norge. Oslo: Dreyers, 2003. Hains, Brigid. The Ice and the Inland: Mawson, Flynn, and the Myth of the Frontier. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002. Hastrup, Kirsten. “Anticipation on Thin Ice: Diagrammatic Reasoning.” In The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature, edited by K. Hastrup and M. Skrydstrup, 77–99. New York: Routledge, 2013. Hastrup, Kirsten, and Morten Skrydstrup, eds. The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature. New York: Routledge, 2013.

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Herbert, Sandra. Charles Darwin, Geologist. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. Hevly, Bruce. “The Heroic Science of Glacier Motion.” Osiris 11 (1996): 66–86. Heymann, Matthias, Henrik Knudsen, Maiken L. Lolck, Henry Nielsen, Kristian H. Nielsen, and Christopher J. Ries. “Exploring Greenland: Science and Technology in Cold War Settings.” Scientia Canadensis 33, no. 2 (2010): 11–42. Hulme, Mike. “Claiming and Adjudicating on Mt Kilimanjaro’s Shrinking Glaciers: Guy Callendar, Al Gore and Extended Peer Communities.” Science as Culture 19, no. 3 (September 2010): 303–26. Katz, Elihu. “Media Events: The Sense of Occasion.” Studies in Visual Anthropology 6, no. 3 (1980): 84–89. Kirk, Ruth. Snow. New York: Morrow Quill, 1977; 2nd ed., Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1998. Knoepflmacher, Ulrich C., and G. B. Tennyson, eds. Nature and the Victorian Imagination. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977. Krupnik, Igor, Claudio Aporta, Shari Gearheard, Gita J. Laidler, and Lene K. Holm, eds. SIKU: Knowing Our Ice; Documenting Inuit Sea Ice Knowledge and Use. New York: Springer, 2010. Lajus, Julia. “Linking People through Fish: Science and Barents Sea Fish Resources in the Context of Russian–Scandinavian Relations.” In Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region: Norden beyond Borders, edited by Sverker Sörlin, 71–94. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. Lajus, Julia, and Sverker Sörlin. “Melting the Glacial Curtain: The Soft Politics of Scandinavian-Soviet Networks in the Geophysical Field Sciences between Two Polar Years, 1932/33–1957/58.” Journal of Historical Geography 44 (April 2014): 44–59. Lopez, Barry. Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1986. Macdougall, Doug. Frozen Earth: The Once and Future Story of Ice Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Malm, Andreas, and Alf Hornborg. “The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative.” Anthropocene Review 1, no. 1 (2014): 62–69. Malmgren, Fredrik. “On the Properties of Sea-Ice.” In Norwegian North Polar Expedition with the ‘Maud’ 1918–1925: Scientific Results 1, no. 5, edited by H. U. Sverdrup, 1–67. Bergen: Geofysisk Intitutt, 1927. Martin-Nielsen, Janet. Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Politics at the Center of Greenland. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Mergen, Bernard. Snow in America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1997. Miller, Clark A., and Paul N. Edwards, eds. Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. National Snow & Ice Data Center. “Arctic Sea Ice Shatters All Previous Record Lows.” 1 October 2007. Retrieved 1 October 2017 from http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seai ceminimum/20071001_pressrelease.html. ———. “Arctic Sea Ice Falls to Third-Lowest Extent; Downward Trend Persists.” 4 April 2010. Retrieved 1 October 2017 from http://nsidc.org/news/newsroom/20101004_ minimumpr.html. Nordlund, Christer. “On Going Up in the World: Nation, Region, and the Land Elevation Debate in Sweden.” Annals of Science 58, no. 1 (2001): 17–50.

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Oreskes, Naomi. “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.“ Science 306, no. 5702 (2004): 1686. Pálsson, Gísli, Sverker Sörlin, Bronislaw Szerzynski, John Marks, Bernard Avril, Carole Crumley, Heide Hackmann, et al. “Reconceptualizing the ‘Anthropos’ in the Anthropocene: Integrating the Social Sciences and Humanities in Global Environmental Change Research.” Environmental Science and Policy 28 (April 2013): 4–14. Peters, John D. The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Pettersson, Otto. “On the Probable Occurrence in the Atlantic Current of Variations Periodical, and Otherwise, and Their Bearing on Meteorological and Biological Phenomena.” Rapports et Procès-Verbaux des Réunions de Conseil Permanent International pour l’Exploration de la Mer 42 (1905): 221–40. ———. “Climatic Variations in Historic and Prehistoric Time.” Svenska hydrogr. biol. Kommissionens skrifter 5 (1914): 1–26. ———. “Long Periodical Variations of the Tide Generating Force.” Publication Circular Conseil Permanent International pour l’Exploration de la Mer 65 (1915): 2–23. Polyak, Leonid, Richard B. Alley, John T. Andrews, Julie Brigham-Grette, Thomas M. Cronin, Dennis A. Darby, Arthur S. Dyke, et al. “History of Sea Ice in the Arctic.” Quaternary Science Reviews 29, no. 15–16 (July 2010): 1757–78. Rowley, Graham. Cold Comfort: My Love Affair with the Arctic. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996; 2nd ed., Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006. Rudwick, Martin J. S. Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Ryd, Yngve. Snö. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 2001. Seligman, Gerald. Snow Structure and Ski Fields: Being an Account of Snow and Ice Forms Met with in Nature, and a Study on Avalanches and Snowcraft. London: Macmillan, 1936. Siple, P. “Proposal for Consideration by the U.S. National Committee (UGY).” 1 May 1953, C1, USNC-IGY. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences Archives, 1953. Skrydstrup, Morten. “Modelling Ice: A Field Diary of Anticipation on the Greenland Ice Sheet.” In The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature, edited by K. Hastrup and M. Skrydstrup, 163–82. New York: Routledge, 2013. Sörlin, Sverker. Framtidslandet: Debatten om Norrland och naturresurserna under det industriella genombrottet. Stockholm: Carlsson, 1988. ———. “Rituals and Resources of Natural History: The North and the Arctic in Swedish Scientific Nationalism.” In Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices, edited by Michael T. Bravo and Sverker Sörlin, 73–122. Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 2002. ———. “Narratives and Counter Narratives of Climate Change: North Atlantic Glaciology and Meteorology, ca 1930–1955.” Journal of Historical Geography 35, no. 2 (April 2009): 237–55. ———. “The Anxieties of a Science Diplomat: Field Co-production of Climate Knowledge and the Rise and Fall of Hans Ahlmann’s ‘Polar Warming.’” Osiris 26 (2011): 66–88. ———. Kroppens geni: Marit, Petter och skidåkning som lidelse. Stockholm: Weyler, 2011; Norwegian translation, Oslo: Pax, 2011. ———. “Environmental Humanities: Why Should Biologists Interested in the Environment Take the Humanities Seriously?” BioScience 62, no. 9 (September 2012): 788–89.

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———. “Ice Diplomacy and Climate Change: Hans Ahlmann and the Quest for a Nordic Region Beyond Borders.” In Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region: Norden beyond Borders, edited by Sverker Sörlin, 23–54. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. ———. “Commentary,” on Svante Arrhenius, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.” In The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change, edited by L. Robin, S. Sörlin, and P. Warde, 313–15. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013. ———. “Cryo-History: Exploring Ice as Indicator of Change in Northern Environments and Societies.” American Historical Association, 3 January 2014. Retrieved 1 October 2017 from https://aha.confex.com/aha/2014/webprogram/Paper13734.html. ———. “Cryo-history: Ice and the Emerging Arctic Humanities.” In The New Arctic, edited by Birgitta Evengard, Joan Nyman Larsen, and Øyvind Paasche, 327–39. New York: Springer, 2015. ———. “Do Glaciers Speak? The Political Aesthetics of Vo/ice.” In Methodological Challenges in Nature-Culture and Environmental History Research, edited by S. Rutherford, A. Sandberg, and J. Thorpe, 13–30. New York: Routledge, 2016. ———. “Scaling the Planetary Humanities: Environmental Globalization and the Arctic.” In The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, edited by Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen, and Michelle Niemann, 433–42. London: Routledge, 2017. ———. “A Microgeography of Authority: Glaciology and Climate Change at the Tarfala Station, 1945–1980.” In Understanding Field Science Institutions, edited by H. Ekerholm, K. Grandin, C. Nordlund, and P. Schell, 255–85. Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2018. Sörlin, Sverker, ed. Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region: Norden beyond Borders. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. Sörlin, Sverker, and Julia Lajus. “An Ice Free Arctic Sea? The Science of Sea Ice and Its Interests.” In Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change: When the Ice Breaks, edited by Miyase Christensen, Annika E. Nilsson, and Nina Wormbs, 70–92. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Spufford, Francis. I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Steffen, Will, W. Broadgate, L. Deutsch, O. Gaffney, and C. Ludwig. “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration.” Anthropocene Review 2 (2015): 81–98. Warde, Paul, and Sverker Sörlin. “Expertise for the Future: The Emergence of Environmental Prediction c. 1920–1970.” In The Struggle for the Long Term in Transnational Science and Politics: Forging the Future, edited by Jenny Andersson and Egle Rindzeviciute, 38–62. New York: Routledge, 2015. Warde, Paul, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin. The Environment: A History of the Idea. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. Weart, Spencer. The Discovery of Global Warming. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003; rev. ed., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Wormbs, Nina, Ralf Döscher, Annnika E. Nilsson, and Sverker Sörlin. “Bellwether, Exceptionalism, and Other Tropes: Political Coproduction of Arctic Climate Modeling.” In Cultures of Prediction: Epistemic and Cultural Shifts in Computer-based Atmospheric and Climate Science, edited by Matthias Heymann, Gabriele Gramelsberger, and Martin Mahony, 133–55. New York: Routledge, 2017. Wright, John K. “The Open Polar Sea.” Geographical Review 43, no. 3 (July 1953): 338–65.

/ PART I Science: Sites of Knowledge

/

CHAPTER 1

Snow and Avalanche Research as Patriotic Duty? The Institutionalization of a Scientific Discipline in Switzerland Dania Achermann

W

hen in the early Cold War period institutionalized ice and snow research took off in the United States, it could build on a basis that was established outside the States. Particularly Switzerland provided staff, experience, instruments, and methods from decades of glacier and avalanche studies in the Alps as well as on expeditions in Greenland. This chapter argues that systematic snow and avalanche studies in Switzerland, emerged between the 1920s and the 1940s, was a crucial basis for the early development of the Cold War ice and snow research. By examining the evolution of avalanche research in Switzerland during this period, this chapter reveals the state of the art at the beginning of the Cold War and exposes continuities as well as shifts of interest before and after 1945. The chapter analyzes the development of Swiss snow and avalanche research with a focus on the 1930s and ’40s, when major steps toward the institutionalization of the discipline took place. What circumstances led to the sound basis of scientific snow research in Switzerland at the end of World War II? What were the factors that influenced the shift from scattered and unsystematic research toward a centralized and standardized scientific discipline? And what role played the fact that the Alps were a key topic in the Swiss national identification and considered to be the “centerpiece of the homeland”? Swiss crystallographer Henri Bader exemplifies the transfer of staff and knowledge from the war to the postwar period as well as from Europe to the United States. He played a crucial role in establishing avalanche research in Switzerland. Before moving to Argentina and later immigrating to the United States, Bader joined the Swiss Expert Commission on Snow and Avalanche Research from 1935 until 1938.1 His expertise in crystallography, gained from his analyses in the Swiss “snow laboratory,” turned out to be crucial for a detailed understanding of snow mechanics and paved his way to become chief scientist

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of the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment (SIPRE) under the US Army Corps of Engineers.2 Within the US Arctic research, however, his expertise was needed in a different context and applied to other research questions than those prevalent until the 1940s. This chapter therefore also helps to detect the shifts in the approach toward snow at the beginning of the Cold War.

Pre-institutionalized Avalanche Research Considering the state of the art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the developments from the 1920s onwards represented significant changes in both approach and interest in avalanches as a study subject. The “beginning” of snow and avalanche research has often been dated back to 1708.3 In that year, the Swiss physician, physicist, and alpinist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1662–1733) published his book Beschreibung der Natur-Geschichte des Schweizerlands (Description of the natural history of the Swiss country).4 In this book Scheuchzer classified two types of avalanches: one characterized by its powdery effect when the fluffy winter snow scatters like dust; the other, mostly observed in spring, described as wet and heavy snow gliding off and transporting rocks and soil.5 At Scheuchzer’s time, only Alpine communities were affected by such avalanches. They considered the forests as the most important protection from the destructive force of avalanches. The sizes of these woods, however, had decreased due to the intensive exploitation since the Middle Ages.6 Hence during the nineteenth century, and to provide better protection, every Swiss Alpine region developed its own avalanche barriers to protect facilities and droves. The range of these constructions included soil or rock walls in the form of an arrow pointing toward the hillside in order to split the approaching snow masses and hopefully leave the building unaffected. Wood or stone galleries were built to protect transportation routes. Also, horizontal trenches, terraces, or walls should prevent the snow from getting into motion further up in the slope.7 The design of these barriers hardly changed during the century, because the communities considered it more effective to invest in forestation than in the development of artificial barriers. For centuries, avalanches were a threat almost exclusively to the Alpine population. But this situation was changing in the late nineteenth century. Formerly simple mountain paths became accessible roads and railway lines, by which more and more people from the lower lands accessed the Alpine regions for summer recreation.8 In 1865 the first winter tourists from England arrived in the mountains and led to a boom of upper-middle-class Alpine tourism at the turn of the century.9 The publication of another book fell into these first heydays of Swiss tourism: in 1881 Swiss chief forester Johan Wilhelm Fortunat Coaz (1822–1918) published Die Lauinen der Schweizeralpen (The avalanches

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of the Swiss Alps).10 Coaz listed the same avalanche types as Scheuchzer. But unlike him, Coaz did not define the categories based on observation and description only. Instead, he measured snow temperature and depth, wind, and the geological constitution of the underground on which an avalanche occurred. Coaz’s book was a benchmark and a key impulse for German-speaking scholars with an interest in studying avalanches. It remains unclear if the book reached overseas, even though some American scholars with a similar interest were able to speak German, as shows the example of James Edward Church (1892–1959) in Reno, Nevada. Church, a classics teacher with a PhD from the University of Munich, Germany, was a passionate mountaineer. While the European high society conquered the Alps, he made his first winter trip on the top of Mount Rose in the Sierra Nevada. On his mountain trips he developed an interest in snow, particularly in the relationship between snow and water supplies. In order to find out more about the water content of snow and with the assistance of Samuel B. Doten of the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station, he initiated the weather observatory on Mount Rose in 1906, where he planned to measure snow deposits, wind velocities, and runoff. Lacking appropriate technology to measure the water content of snow, Church began to work on his own instrumentation.11 Like Coaz, Church and other scholars—mostly foresters—also worked independently, uncoordinated, and without referring to each other’s work. And despite his broad approach, Church neither understood why or how exactly avalanches developed. It was not until the 1920s that the field gained momentum. In 1926 Georg Wilhelm Paulcke (1873–1949), geologist at the Technical University in Karlsruhe, Germany, published the booklet Lawinengefahr: Ihre Entstehung und Vermeidung (Danger of avalanches: their formation and avoidance).12 On the one hand, the booklet was meant to serve as a guide to alpinists listing rules of behavior in case of an avalanche. On the other hand, Paulcke wanted to initiate “systematic studies of this natural phenomenon.”13 He added a questionnaire for skiers and mountaineers guiding them to describe avalanches systematically. When Paulcke approached alpinists, and not only fellow scholars, he included their expertise in his research and acknowledged the observation skills of laymen. This was not unusual but a tradition in Switzerland that had evolved in the second half of the nineteenth century: scholars from different disciplines as well as laymen, including alpinists and skiers, were invited to contribute to the general exploration of the Alps. Reporting observations was deemed a patriotic task in order to form a Swiss “national research project.”14 Skiers were a growing group of interest. By the end of the nineteenth century the Alpine tourists discovered skiing as a worthwhile leisure activity. Formerly limited to the wealthy middle class, it became popular with (and affordable for) the general public, too. An increasing number of mountain railway li-

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censes shows that winter tourism in the Swiss Alpine region grew massively.15 These new railway lines needed protection from avalanches. It was crucial to keep infrastructure like railway tracks and roads safe, not only for tourism. Safe transportation routes were essential for other aspects of economy, too, for supply logistics, communication, and ultimately for an effective operation of a nation. With the growing economic and touristic interest in the Alpine region, uncontrollable moving snow became a concern not only for the Alpine population but for a broad range of people and infrastructure.16

Toward Institutionalizing Avalanche Research: Snow as a New Object of Interest While tourists conquered the winter Alps in search of pure nature to escape their cramped homes in the industrialized European centers, a few men reached for a task of much greater challenge: the exploration of the Arctic. On 1 April 1930, the merchant ship Disko cast off in Copenhagen, heading toward Greenland. On board was the German explorer Alfred Wegener (1880–1930). It was his third expedition, and it would cost his life. The “German Greenland Expedition” (1930–31) aimed for reaching the center of Greenland, Eismitte, and to overwinter under extreme climate conditions in order to record meteorological and glaciological data over an entire year. Wegener and his companions were driven by a scientific interest in snow increase and ice sheet dynamics.17 One of the explorers, Ernst Sorge (1899–1946), dedicated a large amount of his time to study the physical properties of different snow layers, such as the snow density and its variation in different depths.18 Sorge’s focus was on snow in the field, in Eismitte, which turned into a US laboratory during the Cold War.19 Wilhelm Paulcke, too, appreciated the Alpine glaciers as a “natural laboratory” to study avalanches.20 But after years of fieldwork with little progress he sought for a new approach. Inspired by hydraulics laboratories, he considered to build an “international academic laboratory for snow and avalanche research.”21 In February 1931, Paulcke discussed this idea with the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB).22 It was a very snowy winter in Switzerland, and the SBB, prone to the destructive force of avalanches, seemed the right partner to get this plan going. But the railway officers did not see why they should support such a scientific endeavor.23 The foresters were slightly more open. They were in charge of the construction of most avalanche barriers that protected the railway tracks and, for few years, had maintained systematic observation of avalanche-prone areas in winter. When Swiss head forester Marius Petitmermet heard of Paulcke’s idea of a laboratory, he thought it at least worth considering. In December, he summoned his colleagues from the forestry, members of the

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Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), the chair of the ETH board, as well as representatives of several Swiss private railway companies and hydroelectric power stations, and he asked them: Would it be feasible to carry out avalanche research in a laboratory? And is it necessary to initiate research on a national or even international level?24 The discussions let to the conclusion that laboratory studies would not help to advance avalanche research. The group doubted that avalanches could be adequately studied in any better place than in the field: “In any case, we should refrain from establishing a laboratory. Instead, observation and field studies need to be continued.”25 The discussants were confident that the Swiss research activities in the field had been excellent so far; they only needed to be coordinated more efficiently. In order to reach this goal the group decided to form an Expertenkommission für Lawinenforschung (Expert Commission on Avalanche Research).26 The notion of “experts” in the name of the commission indicated the exclusion of laymen. Unlike Johann Coaz or Wilhelm Paulcke, the new generation of researchers excluded mountaineers or mountain dwellers, hitherto consulted and appreciated as observers or advisers. The foresters and scientists criticized their predecessors’ custom to rely on the reports of mountain dwellers instead of accessing the avalanche regions in winter themselves.27 Regarding funding, the commission was less exclusive. They approached whoever they expected to have an interest in protecting their infrastructure: railway and electricity companies, as well as the Federal Mail Service. The latter refused, but electricity as well as several railway companies were willing to provide funding, at this point even the SBB.28 After defining the actors, the members of the Expert Commission urged to prompt “centralized” and “standardized” studies in order to initiate a “scientific” approach toward avalanches as a central objective of the endeavor.29 The research questions were still the same: How do avalanches evolve, and how can they be prevented? But they said the approach should become more “scientific.” An important step toward this goal was the establishment of a network of several research stations in the Swiss Alps, one of them in the Parsenn area in Davos.30 When the Expert Commission took up its work, the questions became more ramified and the research objectives more and more differentiated. New findings raised an abundance of new questions, which asked for adjusted methods, instruments, and approaches. Soon the members of the commission agreed that it was not enough to investigate avalanches. First and foremost, they needed to understand the structure of snow.31 This shift of objective was decisive for the commission’s working agenda. It changed the focus from the visible and large avalanches to the small-scale processes hidden in the snow layers. In 1933, mirroring the broader approach, the commission supplemented its name. The former Expertenkommission für Lawinenforschung (Expert Commission on

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Avalanche Research) turned into the Expertenkommission für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung (Expert Commission on Snow and Avalanche Research).32 The new research interest in snow demanded new skills and adjusted technology. Accordingly, there were consequences for the composition of the staff. First, the commission brought engineers and hydrologists on board, and in 1935 it hired a young crystallographer, Henri Bader. His task was to investigate what he called the “metamorphosis of snow”: the behavior of snow in different stages and under different conditions.33 Bader had neither appropriate research instruments nor experience with snow. He hence needed to improvise. Since snow was a new object of scientific research, the “experts” in the committee in general could hardly fall back on existing methods and practices. Measuring different snow layers, as an example, turned out to be a challenge for Henri Bader. Every snowfall accumulated a new layer, and it had long been acknowledged that these layers played a crucial role in the development of avalanches.34 Like the commission’s maxim of standardized and scientific research demanded, Bader sought to study this role systematically. In order to do so, he needed to develop a method to measure how thick the individual layers were. First, he tried to mark the snow surface after each snowfall with colors. But the colors absorbed the heat and led to a change of the snow structure. After giving up on this idea, Bader spread white paper streams after every snowfall. The paper, though, was not strong enough to withstand the strong winds. Eventually, Bader and his colleagues took advantage of a specific characteristic of wheat flower: when exposed to iodine the flower turns blue. After the researchers had marked several layers with the flower, they dug a cross-section and sprayed a tincture of iodine on the vertical snow wall. Immediately the flower layers turned blue and enabled Bader to measure the thickness of the different snow layers.35 The year after, unsatisfied with color, paper, and flower, he experimented with black threads.36 This way, he made experimental studies over the course of two years and came to the conclusion that snow was an “aggregation of ice crystals,” consisting of ice, water vapor, water, and air. Glacial ice, he noted, was only different in its lack of air.37 From 1936 on, Henri Bader urged for more international cooperation. In his view, knowledge exchange across national borders was important to gain a better understanding of the metamorphosis of snow.38 So far, the Swiss Expert Commission had hardly been engaged in international collaboration. Not even the German Wilhelm Paulcke had been involved in their activities.39 But Bader was not alone with his call. Six years before, the International Association of Scientific Hydrology had constituted the International Commission of Snow. In September 1936, this new commission held its first meeting in Edinburgh. The program of this new international network was “made purposely broad to create a background of universal interest.” It included measuring precipitation and snow cover, snow surveying, studies of the influence of

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snow on runoff, avalanches, ice on lakes and rivers, the physical properties of snow and ice, glaciers, icebergs, instrumentation, and reports of the current expeditions to the polar regions.40 President of the International Commission for Snow was James E. Church. The last few years, Church improved the design of a snow sampler that was easy to take along on mountain or polar expeditions. His “Mount Rose Snow Sampler” was used during the American-British Expedition to the Himalayas in 1936 and on further American expeditions to the Greenland ice cap.41 One exemplar, under the name of “Church-Bohrer,” was also used by the Swiss researchers.42 At the same time, research instruments and methods developed by the Swiss were used by English colleagues.43 However, on the eve of World War II, the Swiss snow scientists restrained from strong collaboration across national borders. Bader’s call was not fully heard until after the war, when he had long left Switzerland.44

From Field to Laboratory: Zooming In on Snow Crystals After four years of field studies, Wilhelm Paulcke’s idea of a snow laboratory came back on the agenda. Crystallographer Henri Bader wanted to investigate snow crystals under the microscope.45 But it proved to be difficult to transport snow samples to wherever a microscope was available. Even slight vibration altered the original fragile snow structure. Therefore, it was impracticable to send samples from the field in the Alps to remote places like the ETH in Zurich. The samples needed to be protected from wind, precipitation, or vibration. A laboratory in the field seemed to solve this problem. Not every member in the Swiss Expert Commission agreed. But eventually the supporters prevailed and decided to build a laboratory as close as possible to the study field.46 In December 1935, this first snow lab was completed in Davos town. It measured three meters wide, four meters long, and two meters high and was built completely with snow. The temperatures inside were constantly between −2°C and −4°C, and the field to collect samples was just outdoor. In the lab, the researchers examined snow under the microscope and with other, newly developed instruments (see figure 1.1).47 The lab was right next to the study field, where the Alpine climate conditions could be utilized. In other words, the fragile character of the research object determined the site where the research took place. After this winter 1935–36, nobody in the commission doubted the success of a laboratory any longer. While the construction was melting under the spring sun, all members voted in favor of the plan to build a new lab for the next winter.48 But this time it ought to be a permanent one, built of wood instead of snow, and situated high up in the mountains.49 From 1936 on, this new, though very basic, wooden hut next to the mountain railway station

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Figure 1.1. Interior view of the snow laboratory with scales (left) and an apparatus to measure the cohesion of snow samples (right).

Photo: Archiv der Eidg. Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft WSL (AWSL), Gemeinsamer Bericht 1935/36, Addendum H12, Photograph I4 P7. Courtesy of AWSL.

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Weissfluhjoch served as the second snow lab, where thousands of snow samples would be studied.50 Until then, it was believed that snow and soil shared the same characteristics. But the studies in the snow laboratory showed that this was not true and that contemporary textbooks were wrong.51 Consequently, the researchers could no longer borrow geosciences’ instruments, concepts, and methods but had to develop their own equipment and approaches. Snow and avalanche research began to distinctly differentiate from other geosciences. The outcome of several years of research was a large set of data collected systematically rather than individually. The main object of research—avalanche—was divided into different subfields, like snow and snow crystals. This new “scientific” way of studying avalanches facilitated the exchange and comparison of data with those collected in other disciplines, like hydrology or geology, and provided the basis for the integration of snow and avalanche research as a distinct discipline within the broader scientific landscape.

“A Specifically Swiss Activity”: The Symbolic Aspect of Snow Research The rise of snow and avalanche research in Switzerland in the 1930s was triggered by several factors. As discussed, the booming winter tourism was one of them. Another was the fact that neighboring disciplines like geoscience, hydrology, or geology had been already established (and institutionalized) in the 1930s and could therefore initially provide instruments, methods, and experts for the new generation of avalanche research. Another important driver was the perception of snow and avalanche research as “a specifically Swiss activity.”52 Traditionally, the Swiss national feeling was strongly related with the Alps. Before World War I, the Alps became an icon of the Swiss federal state and an important symbol of Swiss patriotism.53 The nation was defined by territory, and the relationship to nature was political. Switzerland sought its national identification in Alpine and agricultural societies and myths. But the barren Swiss mountain and agricultural regions suffered from emigration. In addition to the economic consequences for these regions, this emigration also interfered with the conception of the Alps as the site of national identification. Keeping the remaining mountain population safe was vital. During the interwar period, the politicization of the Alps did not decrease.54 On the contrary, as part of the defense strategy against the growing German National Socialism (and the Italian Fascism), the Bundesrat set up a policy to strengthen what they defined as the basic cultural values of Switzerland. The policy was named “Geistige Landesverteidigung” (mental national defense) and intended to focus on the “innate” character of Switzerland. As such, it served as an additional

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defense strategy against the totalitarian regimes in the neighboring countries and as a supplement to military preparations.55 The landscape was essential for this “mental national defense,” and the Swiss self-perception as an Alpine country bestowed a political dimension upon snow, too. In this context, the Expert Commission on Snow and Avalanche Research presented itself as an important element in fighting Germany by defining its task as defending “the Alpine passes under all circumstances as the centerpiece of the homeland.”56 Apart from the symbolic value of mountains and snow, there was also a military strategic dimension. In preparation for World War II, the landscape was occupied by military forces. Swiss topographic maps were classified, and occasionally even postcard pictures were censored.57 After the last world war, the army had lost considerable support in the war-weary Swiss public. But during the 1930s it regained support even in the left-wing parties.58 So when the Expert Commission on Snow and Avalanche Research approached the army as a supporter for their research (first time in 1931), they could trust that such support would not only be of financial and practical but also of moral value. But initially the army officers did not see any benefits in collaborating with the snow researchers. Only after the accident in 1939 when an entire mountain company was buried by an avalanche, the officers became more approachable.59 After all, the soldiers in the Alps had become another group of persons highly threatened by avalanches. The collaboration between the military and the Expert Commission included first aid courses for the soldiers for the case of avalanche burials. In return, the officers agreed to serve as snow observers, reporting their observations to the commission. It was yet a very loose liaison compared to the military-scientific collaboration that gained great importance during the Cold War. Along with the support from the Swiss army, the Expert Commission also distanced itself from colleagues abroad.60 The German Wilhelm Paulcke, for example, initiator of the snow laboratory, was never invited for a meeting, and there is no record of contact after 1931. On the contrary, after Paulcke had approached the Swiss railway company and the head forester, the newly constituted Swiss Expert Commission interpreted his initiative as proof that the Germans were far ahead with their own research.61 Paulcke was perceived as a competitor. What followed was not cooperation but the effort to focus on national research in order to keep up with the assumed international standard. The commission wanted to preserve the “typically Swiss” about avalanche research.62 Avalanche research in Switzerland hence served as a means to mark an area of power and control in the mountain region, which were so important for the Swiss national identity.63 From 1939 onward, scientific competition in Western Europe declined. Germany, Austria, and France, who were some of the main competitors in snow research, put their efforts into the war. Avalanche research seemed not

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59

to have priority. Two years after the outbreak of World War II, the Swiss Expert Commission on Snow and Avalanche Research was convinced that it had “gained the lead” in the field.64 It seemed the right moment to call for a new building. The premises in Davos and on the Weissfluhjoch became too limited.65 Furthermore, the Parsenn railway company was eager to attract more tourists and did no longer tolerate the wooden, in their view unappealing, laboratory next to their station.66 In a request directed to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the researchers asked to replace the wooden hut with a “permanent institution.”67 The request was successful. While Europe was in the midst of World War II, the Swiss ministry together with electricity companies, insurances, railway companies, and the Federal Mail Service were willing to fund the building and the work of a new Institut für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung (Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research). In December 1942, the institute took up its work, absorbing the former Expert Commission.68

Conclusion and Outlook: From a Defensive to a Constructive Approach The shift of snow and avalanche research toward a modern scientific discipline in Switzerland was not an isolated development. The flourishing winter tourism brought masses of tourists to the Swiss mountains, and the Alpine infrastructures like roads, power plants, and railway lines were expanded and needed protection. Therefore, from the 1930s on, the range of persons and buildings affected by avalanches grew enormously. But thanks to the symbolic and strategic importance of the Swiss Alps, avalanche research also gained political importance from the interwar period onward. The Expert Commission’s members defined their work as a patriotic service for the national defense. The decision to fund a federal institute during World War II indicates the importance of such research for the government. With their research, the scientists complied symbolically as well as practically with the patriotic duty to support the national defense. In the course of the institutionalization of the discipline, the question of international cooperation was discussed more prominently than before. When the Expert Commission was constituted, members like Henri Bader called for international cooperation as suggested by the Snow Commission of the American Geophysical Union or the International Commission of Snow.69 Some instruments and research methods found their way across national borders. A noteworthy international cooperation, however, formed only after World War II. Henri Bader, as an example, immigrated to the United States and transferred his expertise to the glaciological research pushed by the US military. He had received his snow research training in the Swiss Expert Commission and

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had been involved in the institutionalization of the previously unorganized discipline. In 1945 the Swiss snow research community had its own institute and was able to provide organized and standardized snow and avalanche research with specifically designed instruments, elaborated expertise, and specialized staff like Henri Bader. It was a basis on which snow and ice research in the Cold War could build. The context and focus of Cold War snow research shifted though. The previously marginal ties between snow research and the military became intense. Furthermore, until the 1940s, the main object of concern was moving snow, and research was supposed to provide protection from the destructive forces of it. Swiss snow research hence followed a defensive approach, considering moving snow as a threat. In the United States, as the following chapter by Janet Martin-Nielsen shows, Henri Bader no longer studied the snow in the local mountains but transferred his knowledge to the Arctic regions as chief scientist of SIPRE. In the US Cold War context, snow was considered not primarily as a threat but as constructing material, which should be made useful for warfare purposes. Thus the expertise gained with a defensive attitude toward snow in Switzerland was made fruitful for a constructive approach in the US Cold War context.

Dania Achermann is Assistant Professor in the history of science and technology at the University of Wuppertal, Germany. She studied history and geography at the University of Zurich and received her PhD in history of science and technology from both Aarhus University and LudwigMaximilians-University Munich. Her main field of interest is the history of science and technology in the twentieth century. Recently she has worked particularly on the history of postwar atmospheric and climate sciences.

Notes 1. The reasons for his emigration are not clear; ETH Zurich, “Gemeinsamer Bericht des Mineralogisch-Petrographischen Institutes der ETH Zurich, der Erdbauabteilung der Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau an der ETH und des Physikalisch-Meteorologischen Observatoriums Davos über die Schneeuntersuchungen der Station Weissfluhjoch im Winter 1938/39” (Archiv der Eidg. Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft WSL [hereafter AWSL]), 2. 2. For Henri Bader’s glaciological work in the United States, see Janet Martin-Nielsen’s contribution in this volume. 3. Among others: Paul Niggli, “Die Schnee-, Lawinen- und Gletscherkunde in der Schweiz,” in Das Eidg. Institut für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung auf Weissfluhjoch, ob Davos, 2660 m.ü.M (Bern: Eidgenössisches Institut für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung, 1946), 12; Robert Haefeli, Zur Entwicklung der Schnee- und Gletscherforschung,

Snow and Avalanche Research as Patriotic Duty?

4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

61

Mitteilungen der Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau und Erdbau an der Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule in Zürich (Zurich: Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau und Erdbau an der Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule, 1961), 1; Christophe Ancey et al., “Some Notes on the History of Snow and Avalanche Research in Europe, Asia and America,” Ice: News Bulletin of the International Glaciological Society 139, no. 3 (2005): 3. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Beschreibung der Natur-Geschichte des Schweizerlands, ed. Johann Georg Sulzer (Zurich: David Geßner, 1707–8). Karl Kasthofer, Bemerkungen über die Wälder und Alpen des Bernerischen Hochgebirgs: Ein Beitrag zur Bestimmung der Vegetationsgrenze schweizerischer Holzarten, des Einflusses der Waldungen auf die Kultur des Hochgebirgs, des Verhältnisses der Forstwirthschaft zur Landwirthschaft und der Bedinge für Verbesserung der Alpenwirthschaft (Aarau: Sauerländer, 1818), 84; Robert Haefeli, Marcel de Quervain, “Gedanken und Anregungen zur Benennung und Einteilung von Lawinen,” Die Alpen 31, no. 4 (1955): 72; Walther Flaig, Der Lawinen-Franzjosef und andere ergötzliche und betrübliche Nachrichten von grausam grüseligen Schneelöwinen nebst einer kleinen Chronik der Lawinenkunde und -katastrophen in früheren Zeiten verzieret mit einigen 30 alten und gar seltenen Abbildungen solcher (Munichem: Gesellschaft Alpiner Bücherfreunde, 1941), 91–92. Verena Stöckli, “Der Bannwald: Lebensgrundlage und Kultobjekt,” in Am Tag danach: Zur Bewältigung von Naturkatastrophen in der Schweiz 1500-2000, ed. Christian Pfister (Bern: Paul Haupt, 2002), 105. Johann Wilhelm Fortunat Coaz, Die Lauinen der Schweizeralpen (Bern: J. Dalp’sche Buch- und Kunsthandlung, 1881), 107. Coaz, Die Lauinen der Schweizeralpen; Quirinius Reichen, “Alpen: 3.7 Tourismus,” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS). Tanja Wirz, Gipfelstürmerinnen: Eine Geschlechtergeschichte des Alpinismus in der Schweiz 1840–1940 (Baden: Hier + Jetzt, 2007), 401; Paul Föhn. “Lawinen,” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS). Coaz, Die Lauinen der Schweizeralpen; the book was published in a second edition 1888. “A Guide to the Papers of James Edward Church, NC96,” University of Nevada, Reno. Wilhelm Paulcke, Lawinengefahr: Ihre Entstehung und Vermeidung (Munich: Lindauersche Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1926). “Das Lawinenheft soll aber auch zweitens dazu beitragen, ein planmäßiges Studium dieser Naturerscheinung in die Wege zu leiten” (“The avalanche booklet also shall contribute to the initiation of a methodical study of this natural phenomenon”); Paulcke, Lawinengefahr, 4. Anja Eichelberg, “Alpensymbolik und Alpenforschung im jungen Bundesstaat von 1848,” in Vermessene Landschaften: Kulturgeschichte und technische Praxis im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. David Gugerli (Zurich: Chronos, 1999), 182–83. “Botschaft des Bundesrates an die Bundesversammlung betreffend Konzession einer elektrischen Drahtseilbahn von Chantarella nach Corviglia bei St. Moritz (09.03.1928),” Bundesblatt, 14 March 1928, 585; “Botschaft des Bundesrates an die Bundesversammlung betreffend Konzession einer Standseilbahn von Schwyz nach dem Stoos (07.03.1930),” Bundesblatt, 12 March 1930, 181; “Botschaft des Bundesrates an die Bun-

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16.

17.

18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

desversammlung über die Abänderung der Konzession der Berninabahn (29.11.1933),” Bundesblatt, 6 December 1933, 823–24; “Botschaft des Bundesrates an die Bundesversammlung über die Erteilung einer Konzession für eine Standseilbahn von Grindelwald nach First (04.06.1934),” Bundesblatt, 6 June 1934, 372. In addition to the routes for tourists, new hydroelectric power stations were built in the Alps. For their relationship with tourism, snow, and avalanches, see Achermann, “Die Schnee- und Lawinenforschung in der Schweiz: Merkmale und Bedingungen des Wandels hin zu einer modernen wissenschaftlichen Disziplin 1931–1943” (master’s thesis, Zurich University, 2009), 34–37. For a similar development in Kazakhstan a few decades later, see Marc Elie’s contribution to this volume. Christian Kehrt, “The Wegener Diaries: Scientific Expeditions Into the Eternal Ice,” Environment & Society Portal digital exhibition (Munich: Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, 2013); Else Wegener, ed., Alfred Wegeners letzte Grönlandfahrt: Die Erlebnisse der Deutschen Grönland-Expedition 1930/31 geschildert von seinen Reisegefährten und nach Tagebüchern des Forschers (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1943). Henri Bader, “Sorge’s Law of Densification of Snow of High Polar Glaciers,” Journal of Glaciology 2, no. 15 (1954). For more about Sorge’s work during the German Greenland Expedition 1930–31, see Janet Martin-Nielsen, Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Politics at the Center of Greenland (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), for example 35–36. Martin-Nielsen, Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination, 2, 83. On polar regions as a laboratory, see also the contributions of Sebastian Vincent Grevsmühl and Roger D. Launius to this volume. Wilhelm Paulcke to Eugen Labhardt, 23 February 1931 (Private Archive Hans Frutiger, hereafter PB HF). Ibid.; Expert Commission on Avalanche Research (EAR), “Meeting Minutes 11 December 1931” (EAR Hs 730:1). Wilhelm Paulcke to Eugen Labhardt, 23 February 1931. Eugen Labhardt to Wilhelm Paulcke, 6 March 1931 (PB HF). EAR, “Meeting Minutes 11 December 1931.” Ibid. Ibid. Expert Commission on Avalanche Research (EAR), “Meeting Minutes 17 November 1933” (EAR Hs 730:1). Expert Commission on Avalanche Research (EAR), “Meeting Minutes 3 February 1933” (EAR Hs 730:1). EAR, “Sitzungsprotokoll 11 December 1931.” EAR, “Sitzungsprotokoll 17 November 1933.” ETH Zurich, “Gemeinsamer Bericht des Mineralogisch-Petrographischen Institutes der ETH Zurich, der Erdbauabteilung der Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau an der E.T.H. und des Physikalisch-Meteorologischen Observatoriums Davos über die Schneeuntersuchungen der Station Weissfluhjoch im Winter 1935/36” (AWSL), 159. EAR, “Sitzungsprotokoll 3 February 1933.” ETH Zurich, “Gemeinsamer Bericht 1935/36,” 127; Henri Bader, Der Schnee und seine Metamorphose: Erste Ergebnisse und Anwendungen einer systematischen Untersuchung der alpinen Winterschneedecke (Bern: Kümmerly & Frey, 1939).

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34. It had been acknowledged by the Greeks already. See, for example, Strabon, IV, 6, 6, 204C, e.g. in Stefan Radt, ed., Strabons Geographika (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 537–39. 35. ETH Zurich, “Gemeinsamer Bericht 1935/36,” 66. 36. ETH Zurich, “Gemeinsamer Bericht des Mineralogisch-petrographischen Institutes der ETH, der Erdbauabteilung der Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau ETH, des Geologischen Institutes der ETH und des Physikalisch-meteorologischen Observatoriums Davos über die Schneeuntersuchungen der Station Weissfluhjoch im Winter 1936/37” (AWSL), 12. 37. ETH Zurich, “Gemeinsamer Bericht 1935/36,” 123. 38. Ibid., 160. 39. EAR, “Sitzungsprotokoll 3 February 1933.” 40. James E. Church, “The International Commission of Snow,” Current Science 7 (1938): 325. 41. Ibid. 42. Expert Commission on Avalanche Research (EAR), “Sitzungsprotokoll 8 December 1932” (EAR Hs 730:1). 43. Max F. Perutz and Gerald Seligman, “A Crystallographic Investigation of Glacier Structure and the Mechanism of Glacier Flow,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 172, no. 950 (August 1939): 339–40. 44. There was limited communication with scientists abroad though. Until 1944 the Expert Commission was in contact with researchers in Munich. Communication with scientists in England and the United States also existed. But these contacts were interrupted and not institutionalized. “Bericht über die Tätigkeit des Eidg. Instituts für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung 1944/45: no. 2,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Forstwesen, no. 12 (1945): 2. 45. ETH Zurich, “Gemeinsamer Bericht 1935/36,” 123; Marius Petitmermet, “Die praktische Bedeutung der schweizerischen Schnee- und Lawinenforschung,” in Das Eidg. Institut für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung auf Weissfluhjoch, ob Davos, 2660 m.ü.M (Bern: Eidgenössisches Institut für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung, 1946), 11. 46. ETH Zurich, “Gemeinsamer Bericht 1935/36,” 5, 138; Expert Commission on Avalanche Research (EAR), “Diskussion über den Gleitapparat-Gruner 27 June 1935” (EAR Hs 730:4). 47. ETH Zurich, “Gemeinsamer Bericht 1935/36,” 6. 48. Ibid., 24, 68. 49. Expert Commission on Avalanche Research (EAR), “Haefeli: Bericht Kap. III. Die Winterarbeit 1936/37” (EAR Hs 1482:1). 50. Petitmermet, “Die praktische Bedeutung der schweizerischen Schnee- und Lawinenforschung,” 10; Expert Commission on Avalanche Research (EAR), “Sitzungsprotokoll 27 October 1937” (EAR Hs 730:1). 51. EAR, “Haefeli Winterarbeit 1936/37.” 52. Ibid. 53. Eichelberg, “Die praktische Bedeutung der schweizerischen Schnee- und Lawinenforschung,” Alpensymbolik und Alpenforschung,” 191. 54. François Walter, Bedrohliche und bedrohte Natur: Umweltgeschichte der Schweiz seit 1800 (Zurich: Chronos, 1996), 90, 95–97.

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55. “Botschaft des Bundesrates an die Bundesversammlung über die Organisation und die Aufgaben der schweizerischen Kulturwerbung (09.12.1938),” Bundesblatt, 14 December 1938, 996. Also the Federal Institute of Technology ETH was supposed to serve the “Geistige Landesverteidigung.” See David Gugerli, Patrick Kupper, and Daniel Speich, Die Zukunftsmaschine: Konjunkturen der ETH Zürich 1855–2005 (Zurich: Chronos, 2005), 205, 211–17; Monika Burri, “Testfall Geistige Landesverteidigung: Die ETH an der Landesausstellung von 1939,” in ETHistory 1855–2005: Sightseeing durch 150 Jahre ETH Zürich, ed. Monika Burri and Andrea Westermann (Baden: Hier + Jetzt, 2005), 38–40. 56. Paul Niggli, “Die Schnee-, Lawinen- und Gletscherkunde in der Schweiz,” in Zur Eröffnung des Eidg. Institutes für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung auf Weissfluhjoch 2668m am 15. April 1943 (Bern: Eidg. Instituts für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung, 1943), 13. 57. Walter, “Bedrohliche und bedrohte Natur,” 90, 153. 58. Jann Etter, Armee und öffentliche Meinung in der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918–1939 (Bern: Francke, 1972), 138, 219. For more about the relationship between the Swiss Social Democratic Party and the national defense in the interwar period, see Marco Zanoli, Zwischen Klassenkampf und geistiger Landesverteidigung: Die sozialdemokratische Partei der Schweiz und die Wehrfrage 1920–1939 (Zurich: ETH Zurich, Forschungsstelle für Sicherheitspolitik und Konfliktanalyse, 2003). 59. “Four Deaths in Swiss Avalanche: Soldiers Isolated in Hut,” The Times (London), 9 March 1939, 13. 60. Some avalanche researchers in neighboring countries were Wilhelm Paulcke (in Karlsruhe), Willi Welzenbach (in Munich), Friedrich W. Sprecher, Mathias Zdarsky (both in Vienna), and Walter Flaig (in Leipzig/Munich). See Friedrich W. Sprecher, “Über die Mechanik der Staublawinen,” Deutsche Alpenzeitung 11 (1911–12); Mathias Zdarsky, Beiträge zur Lawinenkunde (Wien: Alpen-Skiverein Wien, 1929); Willi Welzenbach, Untersuchungen über die Stratigraphie der Schneeablagerungen und die Mechanik der Schneebewegungen nebst Schlussfolgerungen auf die Methoden der Verbauung (Innsbruck: Verlag des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins, 1930); Walther Flaig, Lawinen! Abenteuer und Erfahrung—Erlebnis und Lehre (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1935); Flaig, Der Lawinen-Franzjosef. 61. Otto Lütschg in EAR, “Sitzungsprotokoll 11 December 1931.” 62. See also Rudolf Staub to Marius Petitmermet, 15 November 1935 (EAR Hs 1342:458). 63. The avalanche researchers were not alone with this patriotic attitude. The international scientific competition was in general closely related to national identity. For more information, see Gugerli, Kupper, and Speich, Die Zukunftsmaschine, 231–33. 64. Paul Niggli, “Bericht über den Lawinenkurs für Forstleute in Davos 15.-21.12.1940,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Forstwesen 2 (1941). 65. Expert Comission on Avalanche Research (EAR), “Verschiedene kleine Berichte 1934–38” (EAR Hs 730:5). 66. Petitmermet, “Die praktische Bedeutung der schweizerischen Schnee- und Lawinenforschung,” 10. 67. Edwin Bucher, “Die Entwicklung der schweizerischen Schnee- und Lawinenforschung,” in Zur Eröffnung des Eidg. Institutes für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung auf Weissfluhjoch 2668m am 15. April 1943 (Bern: Eidg. Instituts für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung, 1943), 41.

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68. For a detailed list of donators, see ibid., 46–47. The official inauguration took place on 15 April 1943. ETH Eidgenössische Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft (WSL), Broschüre Zur Eröffnung des Eidg. Institutes für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung auf Weissfluhjoch 2668m am 15. April 1943 (Bern: Eidg. Instituts für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung, 1989). 69. ETH Zurich, “Gemeinsamer Bericht 1935/36,” 160.

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Eichelberg, Anja. “Alpensymbolik und Alpenforschung im jungen Bundesstaat von 1848.” In Vermessene Landschaften: Kulturgeschichte und technische Praxis im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, edited by David Gugerli, 181–93. Zurich: Chronos, 1999. ETH Eidgenössische Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft (WSL). Broschüre Zur Eröffnung des Eidg. Institutes für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung auf Weissfluhjoch 2668m am 15. April 1943. Bern: Eidg. Instituts für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung, 1989. ETH Zurich. “Gemeinsamer Bericht des Physikalisch-Meteorologischen Observatoriums Davos, des Mineralog.-Petrogr. Institutes der ETH Zürich und der Erdbauabteilung der Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau an der ETH Zurich über die Schneeuntersuchungen der Station Davos im Winter 1935/36.” Archiv der Eidg. Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft WSL. ———. “Gemeinsamer Bericht des Mineralogisch-petrographischen Institutes der ETH, der Erdbauabteilung der Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau ETH, des Geologischen Institutes der ETH und des Physikalisch-meteorologischen Observatoriums Davos über die Schneeuntersuchungen der Station Weissfluhjoch im Winter 1936/37.” Archiv der Eidg. Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft WSL. ———. “Gemeinsamer Bericht des Mineralogisch-Petrographischen Institutes der ETH Zurich, der Erdbauabteilung der Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau an der ETH und des Physikalisch-Meteorologischen Observatoriums Davos über die Schneeuntersuchungen der Station Weissfluhjoch im Winter 1938/39.” Archiv der Eidg. Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft WSL. Etter, Jann. Armee und öffentliche Meinung in der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918–1939. Bern: Francke, 1972. Expert Commission on Avalanche Research (EAR). “Sitzungsprotokoll 11 December 1931.” EAR Hs 730:1. ———. “Sitzungsprotokoll 8 December 1932.” EAR Hs 730:1. ———. “Sitzungsprotokoll 3 February 1933.” EAR Hs 730:1. ———. “Sitzungsprotokoll 17 November 1933.” EAR Hs 730:1. ———. “Diskussion über den Gleitapparat-Gruner 27 June 1935.” EAR Hs 730:4. ———. “Haefeli: Bericht Kap. III. Die Winterarbeit 1936/37.” EAR Hs 1482:1. ———. “Sitzungsprotokoll 27 October 1937.” EAR Hs 730:1. ———. “Verschiedene kleine Berichte 1934–38.” EAR Hs 730:5. Flaig, Walther. Lawinen! Abenteuer und Erfahrung—Erlebnis und Lehre. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1935. ———. Der Lawinen-Franzjosef und andere ergötzliche und betrübliche Nachrichten von grausam grüseligen Schneelöwinen nebst einer kleinen Chronik der Lawinenkunde und -katastrophen in früheren Zeiten verzieret mit einigen 30 alten und gar seltenen Abbildungen solcher. Munich: Gesellschaft Alpiner Bücherfreunde, 1941. “Four Deaths in Swiss Avalanche: Soldiers Isolated in Hut.” The Times (London), 9 March 1939. Gugerli, David, Patrick Kupper, and Daniel Speich. Die Zukunftsmaschine: Konjunkturen der ETH Zürich 1855–2005. Zurich: Chronos, 2005. Haefeli, Robert. Zur Entwicklung der Schnee- und Gletscherforschung. Mitteilungen der Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau und Erdbau an der Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule in Zürich. Zurich: Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau und Erdbau an der Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule, 1961.

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Haefeli, Robert, and Marcel de Quervain. “Gedanken und Anregungen zur Benennung und Einteilung von Lawinen.” Die Alpen 31, no. 4 (1955): 72–77. Kasthofer, Karl. Bemerkungen über die Wälder und Alpen des Bernerischen Hochgebirgs: Ein Beitrag zur Bestimmung der Vegetationsgrenze schweizerischer Holzarten, des Einflusses der Waldungen auf die Kultur des Hochgebirgs, des Verhältnisses der Forstwirthschaft zur Landwirthschaft und der Bedinge für Verbesserung der Alpenwirthschaft. Aarau: Sauerländer, 1818. Kehrt, Christian. “The Wegener Diaries: Scientific Expeditions into the Eternal Ice.” Environment & Society Portal digital exhibition. Munich: Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, 2013. Retrieved 1 June 2017 from http://www.environ mentandsociety.org/exhibitions/wegener-diaries. Labhard, Eugen, to Wilhelm Paulcke. 6 March 1931. Private Archive Hans Frutiger. Martin-Nielsen, Janet. Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Politics at the Center of Greenland. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Niggli, Paul. “Bericht über den Lawinenkurs für Forstleute in Davos 15–21 December 1940.” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Forstwesen 2 (1941). ———. “Die Schnee-, Lawinen- und Gletscherkunde in der Schweiz.” In Zur Eröffnung des Eidg. Institutes für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung auf Weissfluhjoch 2668m am 15. April 1943. Bern: Eidg. Instituts für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung, 1943. ———. “Die Schnee-, Lawinen- und Gletscherkunde in der Schweiz.” In Das Eidg. Institut für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung auf Weissfluhjoch, ob Davos, 2660 m.ü.M. Mitteilungen des Eidgenössischen Institutes für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung, 10–20. Bern: Eidgenössisches Institut für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung, 1946. Paulcke, Wilhelm. Lawinengefahr: Ihre Entstehung und Vermeidung. Munich: Lindauersche Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1926. Paulcke, Wilhelm, to Eugen Labhardt. 23 February 1931. Private Archive Hans Frutiger. Perutz, Max F., and Gerald Seligman. “A Crystallographic Investigation of Glacier Structure and the Mechanism of Glacier Flow.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 172, no. 950 (August 1939): 335–60. Petitmermet, Marius. “Die praktische Bedeutung der schweizerischen Schnee- und Lawinenforschung.” In Das Eidg. Institut für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung auf Weissfluhjoch, ob Davos, 2660 m.ü.M., 11. Bern: Eidgenössisches Institut für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung, 1946. Radt, Stefan, ed. Strabons Geographika. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002. Reichen, Quirinius. “Alpen: 3.7 Tourismus.” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS). Retrieved 18 March 2017 from http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D8569-2-7.php. Scheuchzer, Johann Jakob. Beschreibung der Natur-Geschichte des Schweizerlands. Edited by Johann Georg Sulzer. Zurich: in Verlegung des Autoris, 1707–8. Sprecher, Friedrich W. “Über die Mechanik der Staublawinen.” Deutsche Alpenzeitung 11 (1911–12): 241–48. Staub, Rudolf, to Marius Petitmermet, 15 November 1935. EAR Hs 1342:458. Stöckli, Verena. “Der Bannwald: Lebensgrundlage und Kultobjekt.” In Am Tag danach: Zur Bewältigung von Naturkatastrophen in der Schweiz 1500–2000, edited by Christian Pfister, 101–12. Bern: Paul Haupt, 2002. University of Nevada, Reno. “A Guide to the Papers of James Edward Church, NC96.” Retrieved 18 March 2009 from http://dewey.library.unr.edu/xtf/view?docId=ead/NC96ead.xml.

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Walter, François. Bedrohliche und bedrohte Natur: Umweltgeschichte der Schweiz seit 1800. Zurich: Chronos, 1996. Wegener, Else, ed. Alfred Wegeners letzte Grönlandfahrt: Die Erlebnisse der Deutschen Grönland-Expedition 1930/31 geschildert von seinen Reisegefährten und nach Tagebüchern des Forschers. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1943. Welzenbach, Willi. Untersuchungen über die Stratigraphie der Schneeablagerungen und die Mechanik der Schneebewegungen nebst Schlussfolgerungen auf die Methoden der Verbauung. Innsbruck: Verlag des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins, 1930. Wirz, Tanja. Gipfelstürmerinnen: Eine Geschlechergeschichte des Alpinismus in der Schweiz 1840-1940. Baden: Hier + Jetzt, 2007. Zanoli, Marco. Zwischen Klassenkampf und geistiger Landesverteidigung: Die sozialdemokratische Partei der Schweiz und die Wehrfrage 1920–1939. Zurich: ETH Zurich, Forschungsstelle für Sicherheitspolitik und Konfliktanalyse, 2003. Zdarsky, Mathias. Beiträge zur Lawinenkunde. Wien: Alpen-Skiverein Wien, 1929.

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CHAPTER 2

“An Orgy of Hypothesizing” The Construction of Glaciological Knowledge in Cold War America Janet Martin-Nielsen

Glaciology was scarcely a coherent field until encouraged by the Titanic’s collision with an iceberg in 1912. —Trevor Levere, Science in the Canadian Arctic

Upon being named the first executive director of the newly founded Arc-

tic Institute of North America, explorer and glacial geologist Albert Lincoln Washburn was quick to bemoan the status of Arctic knowledge: “We know so little about it [the Arctic] compared with most other parts of the world,” he wrote in 1948.1 The following year, having just arrived in the United States to take up a position at Rutgers University, Swiss glaciologist Henri Bader concurred with Washburn’s evaluation.2 The discipline of glaciology, he lamented to the National Research Council, was characterized by “an orgy of hypothesizing . . . based on quite insufficient observational and experimental data.”3 “There are so many things we do not know about ice that a fruitful general discussion is very difficult,” he continued, pushing for increased energy and organization in glaciological research. As this chapter shows, Washburn’s and Bader’s concerns would be assuaged within only a few decades as harsh Cold War realities propelled the US military to engage in snow and ice research. By looking at the US military’s relationship with glaciology in the Western Arctic (Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland) during the early Cold War, this story forms part of the dramatic expansion of the geophysical sciences in Cold War America, pushed by a military agenda that linked the scientific understanding of the earth to questions of national security and geopolitics.4

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Turning Eyes Northward: The US Military, Glaciology, and the Cold War Prior to the opening of the Cold War, the snow- and ice-covered areas of the globe did not factor prominently in US military thinking—but as the geopolitical situation changed, so too did military priorities. By “seeking to find out as much as [we] can about snow, ice and frozen ground,” explained US general and onetime chief of Army Intelligence Arthur G. Trudeau in 1960, “we expect to gain vital knowledge in an area of the world which is becoming ever more important to America’s defense.”5 Trudeau was referring to the top of the world: the Arctic necklace of Alaska–northern Canada–Greenland, which divided North America from the Soviet Union. This region caught the attention of US military planners for two chief reasons: the need to bolster North American continental security in the face of an enemy seen to be proficient in Arctic matters, and the threat of a potentially catastrophic Arctic ice melt. The polar regions, wrote US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Emil Beaudry in a secret 1949 report, are “a likely avenue of approach for untold destruction” and “unless guarded could well spell doom for the United States as a nation.”6 Beaudry’s concerns, echoed by the highest echelons of US strategic planning, were rooted in the Western Arctic’s geographic location as a stepping-stone between the continents: “The chief strategic importance of the Arctic area,” asserted the Joint War Plans Committee in November 1946, just over a year after the end of World War II in Europe, “derives from the fact that it comprises the most direct route between North America and the USSR.”7 As the Cold War opened, the Arctic region became increasingly important in both defensive and offensive terms: on one hand, early warning systems and defensive forces in the Arctic provided hope of preventing Soviet bombers from reaching major Canadian and US population centers, and on the other, Arctic airfields offered critical operational support by enabling US bombers to reach the Soviet Union with a single airborne refueling.8 The Cold War militarization of the Western Arctic engendered by the push for continental security brought massive changes to the region. In Alaska, the construction of the Alaska Highway as a US Army supply route during World War II, spurred by the too-close-for-comfort Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands in 1942, provided the first direct link between the contiguous US and its northern territory. In 1952, at the peak of US military presence in Alaska, fully one-quarter of the population—more than fifty thousand people—consisted of active duty military personnel.9 Bringing “immediate and enormous transformation to Alaska,” Laurel J. Hummel writes, “the enormous military undertakings in Alaska during the cold war ensured Alaska’s future and set

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the stage for statehood.”10 In neighboring northern Canada, described by P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Matthew Farish as “a bastion between apparently aggressive Soviet Union and the North American industrial heartland [and] a key component of Cold War strategic maps,” intense military activity and military-led modernization through the early Cold War transformed the landscape in ways that are still unfolding today.11 In particular, the construction of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, a chain of radar stations designed to provide early warning of Soviet air and sea-land incursions, “radically alter[ed] the human and physical geographies of the North [and] likely did more to alter the lives of northern inhabitants than any other Cold War initiative.”12 In Greenland too, an island that Beaudry singled out as “probably more vital to the defense of the United States than any other single polar area,”13 the presence of more than ten thousand US servicemen and civilian contractors at Thule Air Base had repercussions not only for the villages of native Greenlanders forced from their homes to make way for the American base, but also for Danish attitudes toward its colony’s modernization more broadly.14 The US military’s postwar interest in the Arctic was motivated not only by continental security, but also by growing concern over the threats posed by environmental change, namely polar warming and ice melt. During World War II, Swedish glaciologist Hans W. Ahlmann began to quietly draw attention to warming and glacial retreat through lectures and interviews in Scandinavia. Building on years of data gathered on interwar expeditions to Iceland, Spitsbergen, and Greenland, Ahlmann argued that the period 1920–40 showed a clear signature of polar warming.15 “The most urgent [priority] is continued research into what is called the current polar warming or embetterment of climate in higher latitudes,” he asserted to the Norwegian press in 1945.16 Ahlmann’s views reached the United States in May 1947, when he painted the potential consequences of the recent 5°C rise in Arctic temperatures in a lecture at the University of California’s Geophysical Institute. The potential ice melt associated with any persistence of this temperature rise, he warned, could cause oceans to rise “to catastrophic proportions [such that] peoples living in lowlands along the shore would be inundated.”17 The following month, Ahlmann’s warnings took center stage at a secret Pentagon meeting in which the US military’s Joint Research and Development Board “expressed interest in studying ice thickness and polar warming in the Arctic region, convinced that such knowledge was needed in the event of a conflict with the Soviet Union, strategically situated across the little-reconnoitered expanse of Arctic ice.”18 The potential consequences of Arctic ice melt were immense: from fishing rights to all-season transport through Arctic waters to changing defense strategies, environmental change in the Arctic had potentially dire implications for US military and diplomatic interests.19

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A Scientific Agenda With these dual challenges forcing the US military to confront the Arctic, science quickly came to the fore. In line with the scientific and technological optimism that informed US thought through the postwar era, the geophysical sciences were seen as vital for establishing strategic command of the vital northern regions. “Expanded Arctic research is essential so that we may extend our northern military frontier to the Soviet Arctic littoral,” asserted the Arctic Institute of North America, an influential military contractor and think tank, in 1957. “Unless we meet this challenge,” they continued in reference to Soviet Arctic research, “we will invite a scientific Pearl Harbor.”20 Scientific research was necessary to understand the materials and environment of the Arctic— snow, ice, and permafrost—and to enable military operations in and control of that environment. As embraced by the US military, this research strategy spanned the geophysical sciences from glaciology to geology to seismology to ionospheric research.21 In order to engineer the cold regions to their advantage, the US military needed to be able to build and maintain roads, airstrips, radar stations, rocket launching pads, military camps, and other installations throughout the Arctic, as well as to probe the effects of environmental change on such installations. The first step in these endeavors was to understand the basic properties of snow and ice and then to manipulate and engineer these substances into sophisticated, versatile materials—a set of investigative priorities that placed the spotlight squarely on glaciology. At the opening of the Cold War, US military personnel described existing knowledge of the properties of snow, ice, and permafrost in the United States as “unsystematic and unsatisfactory.”22 The country’s neglect of polar regions prior to World War II and the US military’s poor showing in warfare in cold environments during that conflict made it clear that much basic research was necessary. The extent of military need for basic glaciological research was “unusual [and] made necessary by the fact that wide areas of knowledge of the fundamental properties of snow and ice have never been established by civilian research,” wrote Yale University glacial geologist Richard F. Flint in a 1950 memo on snow, ice, and permafrost in military operations, underlining the striking lack of scientific knowledge about glaciology in the United States at the time.23 “The Department of Defense has been obliged to bring basic knowledge of snow and ice up to the level of knowledge of other substances, such as steels and other metals,” continued Flint. “Usually military research does not have to reach so far down toward the foundations of science as it has to do in this exceptional case.” Indeed, in a 1996 retrospective, US glaciologists Carl S. Benson and Charles R. Wilson recalled that “the ad hoc approaches to engineering in cold regions by the Army during World War II had failed many

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times due to the lack of understanding of the complex behavior of snow, ice, and frozen ground.”24 The US military’s need for glaciological knowledge comes through clearly in the case of Greenland. To combat the Soviet threat in the Arctic regions, explained US General Arthur G. Trudeau to the Danish government during negotiations over US presence in Greenland, “it is necessary for us to investigate the feasibility and techniques of military operations in this area.”25 “That is why the Corps of Engineers and other technical services of the Army are in Greenland seeking to find out as much as they can about snow, ice and frozen ground,” he continued. “For example the amount of pressure which the ice can take before shattering may be directly related to such future military problems as blastoff impact when launching missiles.” To US eyes, glaciological research in Greenland was essential for, in Trudeau’s words, “gain[ing] vital knowledge in an area of the world that is becoming ever more important to America’s defense.” The resulting US Cold War work in Greenland was described by Danish glaciologist Børge Fristrup as “the most intensive . . . glaciological research program that had ever been envisaged.”26

“We Know So Little”: Glaciological Knowledge in the United States The military’s dissatisfaction with the state of US glaciology in the early postwar years was a reflection of the academic and professional status of the discipline in America. In the early postwar era, the United States boasted few glaciologists and little homegrown glaciological knowledge. Across the entire country, only forty academics identified themselves as doing glaciological research, and in only two of these cases did glaciology make up the entirety of that man’s research.27 “The graduate students now engaged in this discipline are not even as numerous as the faculty,” bemoaned Ohio State University’s Richard P. Goldthwait regarding the twenty-seven students undertaking graduate research in glaciology. In the 1950s, no US schools granted degrees in glaciology, and only two universities had cold laboratories devoted to the discipline. “There are virtually no experienced senior academic men devoted chiefly to glaciology,” continued Goldthwait. “No American university is fully equipped for glaciological teaching or research, [and] research in the United States is inadequate to attack any of the pressing glaciological problems which are being solved increasingly in Sweden, Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, France, and Austria.” On this last point, US science administrator Vannevar Bush agreed entirely: countries including Switzerland, Sweden, and the USSR, he wrote in 1947, are miles ahead of the United States in terms of glaciology

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and especially the relationship between glaciology and climate.28 The Soviet knowledge of ice and snow, already strong during the interwar years, was a real concern. US planners were fully aware that the Soviet ability to conduct warfare in cold environments had dealt a severe blow to the Wehrmacht, and through the early Cold War, US military bodies made a concerted effort to obtain, translate, and study Soviet glaciological research.29 Tellingly in a country with such limited experience with ice and snow, the leading figure of US glaciology in the 1950s and 1960s, Henri Bader, was a Swiss immigrant who arrived in the United States after the war, having completed his glaciological training in Switzerland.30 This dearth of glaciological knowledge in the US was rooted in the country’s geography. “The United States, having acquired the non-contiguous territory of Alaska in the late nineteenth century,” writes Fae Korsmo, “was hardly an Arctic nation,” and, consequently, US glaciology was a “relatively small and unorganized field.”31 That acquisition was mired in criticism at home, where it became known as “Seward’s Folly” (for William H. Seward, the US secretary of state who pushed for the purchase from the Russians), and Alaska barely featured in US minds from the acquisition in 1867 until the Klondike gold strike of 1896. Further, while US explorers, businessmen, and politicians had been active in the Western Arctic since the nineteenth century, US strategic interest in the region only arose during World War II.32 Even in neighboring Canada, as Trevor Levere notes in his sweeping history of science in the Canadian North, “glaciology was scarcely a coherent field until encouraged by the Titanic’s collision with an iceberg in 1912.”33 While the state of glaciological knowledge in the postwar US was tightly entwined with that country’s history as a non-Arctic nation, dissatisfaction with the discipline was not confined to America. Ahlmann, the dean of Swedish glaciology and an increasingly influential international figure in the postwar era, expressed similar concerns and emphasized the need for more polar-based research. “The snow, ice and glaciers of these regions [polar regions] only recently became objects of interest and study,” he lamented in a lecture to the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, England, in 1948. “The conclusion cannot be avoided that no one has yet gone deep enough to be able to explain . . . polar glaciers.”34 While glaciological research in the Alps and in Alaska was well-established, Ahlmann continued, “the results thus obtained cannot be applied directly to the inland ice and glaciers of polar type [sic],” which form a distinct geophysical type.35 It was thus imperative, he concluded, to pursue systematic work on polar glaciers, to leave behind the old natural history style of glaciology and introduce controlled measurements and experiments to the world’s polar ice sheets. “The science of glaciology is scarcely a century old,” agreed the University of Aberdeen’s P. D. Baird and the California Institute of Technology’s R. P. Sharp in 1955. “For many years it was treated rather lightly,

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mostly by geologists who happened to be also enthusiastic mountain climbers. . . . Until recently,” they continued, “little [polar] glaciological work has been attempted.”36 The need for more work, Baird and Sharp concluded in sympathy with Ahlmann, was especially pressing given “the extent of the recent rather alarming retreat of glaciers”—a situation that would, in the following years, bring increased environmental interest of both the polar regions.

Constructing Glaciological Expertise How did US military bodies build the glaciological expertise they required? Given the dual challenges posed by the Arctic in the opening years of the Cold War—as a line of first defense against the Soviet Union and as a harbinger of environmental change—the need to move from “low returns of scattered and isolated research by single individuals” to “work[ing] in groups and concentrat[ing] our effort,” as Bader put it, was pressing.37 For the US military, this new era of glaciological research saw unprecedented scientific study and technological commitment, as well as massive intervention in the Western Arctic. The glaciology portion of the US science-based polar strategy was spearheaded by a trio of laboratories: founded in 1949 under the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment (SIPRE) merged with the Arctic Construction and Frost Effects Laboratory (ACFEL, itself dating from 1953) to form the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) in 1961.38 The three laboratories represented the US military’s front line in the race to build glaciological knowledge. The link between glaciology and the military is succinctly captured by CRREL’s mission statement: to “conduct research and investigations in the field of cryological phenomena pertaining to snow, ice, and frozen ground to determine the physical properties of these materials as they may influence the design and performance of military equipment, facilities, and operations of the Army.”39 After the merger, CRREL had a devoted staff of more than two hundred enlisted personnel, military officers, and civilians spread over four divisions: Research (basic studies of snow, ice, and permafrost, as well as cold regions environmental and climatic issues), Experimental Engineering (design and construction of military facilities in cold environments), Photographic Interpretation (primarily detection of under-snow targets from the air), and Technical Services.40 Sprawled over an eighteen-acre campus in Hanover, New Hampshire, CRREL’s research facilities included twenty-four state-of-the-art cold rooms and an early electronic digital computer. CRREL’s budget was equally impressive, surpassing $13 million in today’s money in 1962 alone.41 Through the early Cold War, these laboratories operated facilities across the Western Arctic designed to build glaciological expertise and improve the

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military’s ability to function in the Arctic world. In Alaska, for example, the ACFEL ran its Alaska Field Station near Fairbanks from 1953 until the merger in 1961. With five permanent buildings and multiple test sites, the Alaska Field Station permitted the study of the behavior of construction foundations in permafrost and the development of engineering criteria for military construction in cold environments. In Canada, SIPRE took over the Canadian Army’s rocket launching complex at Fort Churchill, Manitoba, in 1959 and used it for bomb penetration tests and ice core drill development until 1970.42 And Greenland hosted Camp Century, a two-hundred-person under-ice nuclear-powered scientific and military camp representing the acme of US glaciological research facilities.43 Logistical support for this glaciological work came from US Air Force bases strung throughout the Western Arctic, as well as associated facilities in the contiguous United States including, most importantly, the US Army’s Natick Laboratories in Massachusetts and the Keweenaw Field Station in Michigan. The resources devoted to US military-led glaciology in the Western Arctic were a product of perceived Cold War strategic necessity. In the US tradition of Big Science, dating from World War II, large-scale investment in science and technology, coupled with large budgets, was seen as the key to conquering ice and snow. For the glaciologists on the ground, the entire system seemed both opaque and hugely generous. “It was like having an infinite budget,” former SIPRE glaciologist Carl S. Benson said in 2001: The program was overwhelmingly big. I just can’t get over that. When we look at the way we budget things today, and think back to how things were going then, there was never a nickel exchanged. There was never talk of money. If we needed Weasels [motorized polar tractors], if we needed an aircraft, we just put in the request and we got these things.44

With its manpower, funding, military logistical support, and engineering aims, the world of US Cold War glaciological activity in the Arctic was arguably one that earlier polar glaciologists would not have recognized.

Research Directions and Projects What types of glaciological research did the US military pursue in the early Cold War era, why, and with what results? In order to approach this question in a workable manner, this chapter focuses on Greenland. Between 1949 (when SIPRE was founded) and 1966 (when, for a variety of reasons, US military glaciological interest in Greenland declined sharply),45 the US glaciology program in Greenland comprised five main areas: fundamental snow, ice,

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and permafrost studies (e.g., glacier movement, physical properties of snow, ice, and permafrost, and stratification studies), overland transport (e.g., snow and ice trafficability, pathfinding and trail marking, crevasse detection, and buried railways), air transport (snow and ice runway construction), ice sheet construction (e.g., ice tunnels, snow stabilization and strength, pile and load studies, and ice deformation over time), and ice core drilling (including deep core drilling to the bottom of the ice sheet).46 The first of these areas aimed to build a basic understanding of snow, ice, and permafrost. Together, SIPRE’s chief scientist, Henri Bader, and SIPRE’s director, Albert Lincoln Washburn—the two men who had expressed such concern about the state of US glaciology in the immediate postwar years— designed a plan for systematic studies of snow and ice density, hardness, temperature, structure, and thermal and electrical properties stretching over a decade.47 Cognizant of the lack of a glaciological tradition in the United States, Bader and Washburn also called upon Japanese scientists (most importantly, Ukichiro Nakaya and Daisuke Kuroiwa) to lend their expertise to SIPRE and traveled abroad to consult with European experts. In 1962, after thirteen years of continuous work in Greenland, enough knowledge had been gathered to publish a comprehensive report titled Physics and Mechanics of Snow as a Material (coauthored by Bader and Kuroiwa), which soon became the standard snow and ice reference source for both military and civilian glaciologists in the United States.48 More fancifully, US Colonel Philip G. Krueger noted in a 1965 lecture that such a thorough understanding of the basic properties of Greenland’s ice sheet might even bolster America’s ability to compete in the space race, since “the possibility exists that the uninhabited expanse of snow on the Greenland ice cap might provide a safe and soft landing area for astronauts, and apparently the Russians brought in Colonel Leonov, the space walker and his co-pilot, into a snow covered area.”49 These basic studies were put to use in the next three areas, all of which directly addressed the military’s ability to work effectively and efficiently in Greenland. The importance of overland and air transport to military operations is clear: renowned as being “almost fantastically hostile,” Greenland’s ice sheet posed grave dangers to those navigating on or above it.50 Beginning in the early 1950s, SIPRE devoted extensive efforts to building safe, year-round trails, roads, and aircraft runways in Greenland, including detecting and bridging ice gaps and crevasses and transforming snow surfaces into runways.51 Ice sheet construction, too, was essential to housing and supporting military personnel not only on, but also in, the vast ice sheet. In 1954 a team of more than a dozen US scientists, led by Henri Bader, launched a five-year study of ice movement and deformation “for the purpose of ascertaining the limiting size of a room or tunnel that can be excavated in the ice without collapse or excessive deformation forming” and, ultimately, to give rise to “satisfactory design criteria

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for military installations on high polar ice caps.”52 This work underscores the engineering approach that the US military brought to Greenland: by first gaining an understanding of the basic properties of snow and ice, then processing them to increase their hardness and strength, and finally using them for construction purposes, US glaciologists transformed snow and ice into versatile and sophisticated materials able to be used for roads, runways, emergency shelters, under-ice military and scientific camps, fuel storage tanks, and waste containment systems, among a myriad of other purposes and structures. In a region defined by ice and snow, wrote Lieutenant Colonel Elmer F. Clark, commander of the Greenland research and development program in 1955–57, this approach was “exceedingly attractive . . . from the point of view of monetary as well as logistical economy.”53 The final area of glaciological research, ice core drilling, was further removed from military needs. It was Bader’s personal interest in the field, and his ability to gain support and attract money allowed ice core research to flourish in Greenland in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1966, after several years of drilling at Camp Century, CRREL achieved the world’s first bedrock ice core—a narrow tunnel that reached 1,387 meters to the bottom of the ice sheet and provided a direct physical link more than one hundred thousand years into the past. This ice core yielded powerful paleoclimatological information about past temperatures, and its success stimulated rapid growth in ice core research in the United States and Europe.54 US glaciological research was also boosted by the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957–58. Representing “the largest set of coordinated experiments and field expeditions to be undertaken during the cold war,” the IGY encompassed all the geophysical sciences and crossed both East-West and North-South boundaries, involving tens of thousands of scientists from nearly seventy countries.55 Whilst the US IGY effort was concentrated on ionospheric phenomena, glaciological projects also took place in both the Arctic and the Antarctic—including, most notably, a five-month, three-thousand-kilometer overland long trek along Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf, in which six scientists recorded in minute detail the physical properties of snow and ice on the shelf.56 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the relationship between US military glaciology and the IGY in any detail;57 it is, however, important to note that US ice core research, led by Henri Bader, was tightly linked into both programs.58

An Engineering Agenda The US military’s Cold War glaciology program can be understood as an engineering approach to the discipline designed to elevate snow and ice into

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versatile, sophisticated materials. Forced to work in a region where most conventional materials suffered from a “substantial loss of useful structural properties” due to the cold temperatures, Bader, Washburn, and their researchers came to see snow and ice not as the problem, but as materials capable of being used as a solution.59 This approach differs from prewar glaciological agendas, which centered on understanding glacial advance, retreat, erosion, and deposits. The closest prewar parallel to the US approach to snow and ice was the Swiss effort to understand the practical implications of glaciers for avalanche control and hydroelectricity production of the 1930s—but this was far removed from the polar sphere. The importance of the US research agenda comes through clearly in NATO documents, including a 1961 long-term assessment of scientific capacities: “Applied studies leading to the development of new methods of constructing facilities using locally available snow, ice, and permafrost have demonstrated the feasibility of maintaining forces in some of the ice covered lands,” stated the assessment, emphasizing the strategic importance of the polar regions for the alliance.60 With their emphasis on the practical use of snow and ice, US glaciologists of the Cold War era plotted out a new region on the discipline’s intellectual map—one that saw strategic necessity and military-driven science and engineering meet on the ice sheet. The story told here is one case in a much larger battle of the global Cold War: that which pitted US military personnel against hostile environments, be they the polar regions or, at the other extreme, tropical and desert areas. From a big-picture perspective, US planners saw these disparate environments as a single unit, a set of potential theaters of war, which needed to be probed, tested, and ultimately brought under control.61 The need to “recognize a set of hostile environments and then regulate them as far as possible,” writes Matthew Farish, was part of an environmental Cold War that was predicated on the belief that intervention might be required at any time and in any part of the globe.62 The case of glaciology calls attention to a nuance in this hostile environments narrative: even as US planners commented on and complained about the hostile nature of Greenland’s ice sheet, and the polar regions more broadly, often in colorful language, so too did they co-opt the elements of that environment—ice and snow—to overcome its inherent difficulties.

Janet Martin-Nielsen was formerly postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Science Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research spans Arctic science, environmental history and politics, climate change history, and history of the social sciences. She is the author of Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Politics at the Centre of Greenland (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and many articles. She now lives in Ottawa, Canada, with her family.

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Notes For more detailed analyses of the ideas contained in this chapter, see the author’s other works, namely Janet Martin-Nielsen, “The Other Cold War: The United States and Greenland’s Ice Sheet Environment, 1948–1966,” Journal of Historical Geography 38, no. 1 (January 2012); Janet Martin-Nielsen, Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Politics at the Center of Greenland (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Janet Martin-Nielsen, “Security and the Nation: Glaciology in Early Cold War Greenland,” in Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice, ed. Ronald E. Doel, Kristine C. Harper, and Matthias Heymann (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 1. Albert Lincoln Washburn, quoted in P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Matthew Farish, “The Cold War on Canadian Soil: Militarizing a Northern Environment,” Environmental History 12 (2007): 927. 2. See Dania Achermann’s contribution to this volume. 3. Henri Bader, “Trends in Glaciology in Europe,” Geological Society of America Bulletin 60, no. 9 (September 1949): 1309. 4. Key works on this topic include John Cloud, “Introduction: Special Guest-Edited Issue on the Earth Sciences in the Cold War,” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003); Ronald E. Doel, “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA after 1945,” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003); Ronald E. Doel, “Quelle Place Pour les Sciences de l’Environnement Physique Dans l’Histoire Environnementale?,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 56, no. 4 (2009); Matthias Heymann et al., “Exploring Greenland: Science and Technology in Cold War Settings,” Scientia Canadensis 33, no. 2 (2010). 5. PJV Journal, 27 February 1960 (Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives), Udenrigsministeriet collection, 105.F.10). 6. Emil G. Beaudry, “Air Potentialities of the Greenland Ice Cap in High Latitude Defense,” Faculty of the Air Command and Staff School of the Air University, Code no. 12 (Alabama: Maxwell Air Force Base, 1949; National Archives and Records Administration [NARA], RG 319, Records of the Army Staff, originally secret). 7. Joint War Plans Committee, “Strategic Importance of the Arctic and Subarctic Regions, JWPC 484/1,” 6 November 1946 (Reference PM-392; NARA, RG 218, JCS Geographic File A48-50, Box 2, CCS 381 Arctic Area, 10-1-46, Section 1-2). 8. For US polar strategy during the Cold War, see for instance S. Chaturvedi, The Polar Regions: A Political Geography (Chichester: Wiley, 1996); Nikolaj Petersen, “SAC at Thule: Greenland in the US Polar Strategy,” Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 2 (Spring 2011); Clive Archer, “The United States Defence Areas in Greenland,” Cooperation and Conflict 23 (1988). 9. Laurel J. Hummel, “The US Military as Geographical Agent: The Case of Cold War Alaska,” Geographical Review 95, no. 1 (January 2005): 51. 10. Ibid., 47. Alaska was incorporated as a US territory in 1912 and entered the union as the forty-ninth state on 3 January 1959. 11. Lackenbauer and Farish, “The Cold War on Canadian Soil,” 923. 12. Ibid., 928, 942. 13. Beaudry, “Air Potentialities of the Greenland Ice Cap.” 14. Erik Beukel, Frede P. Jensen, and Jens Elo Rytter, Phasing Out the Colonial Status of

“An Orgy of Hypothesizing”

15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21.

22.

81

Greenland, 1945–54: A Historical Study (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010); Mads Lidegaard, Grønlands Historie (Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1991). The integration of the Arctic as a critical node for continental security was far from being purely an American phenomenon; it was an endeavor entrenched in negotiations between the United States and the two countries that exerted sovereignty over vast swaths of Arctic territory: Canada (for the Canadian Arctic archipelago) and Denmark (for Greenland). The political and diplomatic underpinnings of this presence have recently been discussed in the literature; see Henrik Knudsen, “Cold War, Ionospheric Research in Greenland, and the Politics of Rockets: A Study of the Ill-fated Operation PCA 68” (Aarhus: Aarhus University Centre for Science Studies, forthcoming); Lackenbauer and Farish, “The Cold War on Canadian Soil”; Nikolaj Petersen, “The Politics of US Military Research in Greenland in the Early Cold War,” Centaurus 55, no. 3 (August 2013); Richard C. Powell, “Science, Sovereignty and Nation: Canada and the Legacy of the International Geophysical Year, 1957–1958,” Journal of Historical Geography 34, no. 4 (October 2008). For an overview of Ahlmann’s work, see Sverker Sörlin, “Narratives and Counter Narratives of Climate Change: North Atlantic Glaciology and Meteorology, c. 1930–1955,” Journal of Historical Geography 35, no. 2 (April 2009); Sverker Sörlin, “The Global Warming That Did Not Happen: Historicizing Glaciology and Climate Change,” in Nature’s End: Environment and History, ed. Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Hans W. Ahlmann, quoted in Sörlin, “The Global Warming That Did Not Happen,” 101. Hans W. Ahlmann, quoted in Doel, “Quelle Place Pour les Sciences,” 6. Doel, “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences,” 639. As Doel notes, it is unclear whether Ahlmann himself spoke before the board or whether his findings were reported by fellow Swedish scientist Carl-Gustav Rossby. See Doel, “Quelle Place Pour les Sciences,” 6–7. It is unclear to what extent the Pentagon’s initial concerns in this area were acted upon. Arctic Institute of North America, Office of Naval Research, Arctic Research Advisory Committee, “Report from 25 October 1957” (presented at the Hearings before the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, House of Representatives Eighty-Fifth Congress, second session, 22–24 January 1958), 38. Emphasis added. This chapter focuses on glaciology; for discussions of other geophysical sciences in this context, see Kai-Henrik Barth, “The Politics of Seismology: Nuclear Testing, Arms Control, and the Transformation of a Discipline,” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003); Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Oceanographers and the Cold War: Disciples of Marine Science (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005); Heymann et al., “Exploring Greenland: Science and Technology in Cold War Settings”; MartinNielsen, “The Other Cold War”; Christopher Jacob Ries, “On Frozen Ground: William E. Davies and the Military Geology of Northern Greenland, 1952–1960,” Polar Journal 2, no. 2 (December 2012). US Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment, “Report 1, 1950” (Wilmette, IL: US Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment, 1950; Arktisk Institut, Copenhagen, Box SIPRE Reports 1–8), 35.

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23. Richard F. Flint, SIPRE Report 15. Snow, Ice and Permafrost in Military Operations, 1950 (Wilmette, IL: US Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment, 1950), 3–5. 24. Carl S. Benson and Charles R. Wilson, “Barry Bishop’s Research on the Sheer Moraines in the Thule Area, Northwest Greenland,” Mountain Research and Development 16, no. 3 (August 1996): 310. 25. PJV Journal, 27 February 1960. 26. Børge Fristrup, The Greenland Ice Cap, trans. David Stoner (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966), 146. 27. Richard P. Goldthwait, “Glaciology: Report of the University Committee on Polar Research, National Academy of Sciences, 1956” (Library and Archives Canada [LAC], Arctic Institute of North America Fonds, MG28, I79, Volume 212, Folder 29), 22–27. 28. Vannevar Bush, quoted in Fae L. Korsmo, “The Early Cold War and US Arctic Research,” in Extremes: Oceanography’s Adventures at the Poles, ed. Keith R. Benson and Helen M. Rozwadowski (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2007), 180. 29. These bodies include SIPRE and CRREL, introduced in the following section. The translated documents (which are now held at the US CRREL Library in Hanover, NH) fall into four main categories: cold regions technologies (especially for transport), seaice forecasting, cold regions engineering and construction, and descriptions of Soviet polar research stations and programs. 30. For Bader and the flow of glaciological knowledge from Switzerland to the United States, see Dania Achermann’s contribution to this volume, as well as Dania Achermann, “Die Schnee- und Lawinenforschung in der Schweiz: Merkmale und Bedingungen des Wandels hin zu einer modernen wissenschaftlichen Disziplin 1931–1943” (master’s thesis, Zurich University, 2009). 31. Fae L. Korsmo, “Glaciology, the Arctic, and the US Military, 1945–58,” in New Spaces of Exploration: Geographies of Discovery in the 20th Century, ed. Simon Naylor and James R. Ryan (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 126, 146. 32. Nancy Fogelson, “Greenland: Strategic Base on a Northern Defense Line,” Journal of Military History 53, no. 1 (January 1989); Michael F. Robinson, The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 33. Levere, Science and the Canadian Arctic, 426. 34. Hans W. Ahlmann, “The Contribution of Polar Expeditions to the Science of Glaciology (A Lecture Delivered to the Scott Polar Research Institute on 1 May 1948),” Polar Record 5 (1948): 324–26. 35. Ibid., 324. 36. P. D. Baird and R. P. Sharp, “Glaciology,” in Arctic Research: The Current Status of Research and Some Immediate Problems in the North American Arctic and Subarctic, ed. D. Rowley (Calgary: Arctic Institute of North America, 1955), 29–40, 30–31. 37. Bader, “Trends in Glaciology in Europe,” 1310. 38. SIPRE, ACFEL, and CRREL were not the only US military bodies working on Arctic issues during the Cold War; however, discussion of other such bodies is outside the scope of this chapter. See Matthew Farish, “Creating Cold War Climates: The Laboratories of American Globalism,” in Environmental History and the Cold War, ed. J. R. McNeill and C. R. Unger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

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39. US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, “Organization and Function, US Army Corps of Engineers, June 1962” (LAC, Arctic Institute of North America Collection, MG 28, I 79, Volume 211, Folder 211-15), 1. 40. For CRREL, see E. A. Wright, CRREL’s First 25 Years, 1961–1986 (Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1986). Owing to the poor status of glaciological knowledge in the US, CRREL also devoted significant efforts to a bibliographic project, which by 1962 had compiled more than nineteen thousand abstracts reviewing glaciology literature from around the world. 41. Report of Committee on Polar Research, February 1972, NARA. For a broader discussion of US military patronage for glaciology, see Korsmo, “The Early Cold War and US Arctic Research”; also note that the US military had different interests and priorities in the Antarctic, where the strategic considerations were far removed from the Cold War concerns in the Arctic. For the Antarctic case, see Dian Olson Belanger, Deep Freeze: The United States, the International Geophysical Year and the Origins of Antarctica’s Age of Science (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010). 42. G. Robert Lange, CRREL Technical Report 95: Rotary Drilling and Coring in Permafrost, Part 1: Preliminary Investigation, Fort Churchill, Manitoba (Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1968); C. W. Livingston, CRREL Technical Report 71: Bomb Penetration Tests, Fort Churchill, Canada (Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1960). 43. Charles M. Daugherty, City Under the Ice: The Story of Camp Century (New York: Macmillan, 1963); Walter Wager, Camp Century: City Under the Ice (Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1962). 44. Karen Brewster, “Oral History Interview,” interview by Carl S. Benson, Byrd Polar Research Center Oral History Program, 22 June 2001, 7, 29. 45. For discussion of this decline, see Janet Martin-Nielsen, “‘The Deepest and Most Rewarding Hole Ever Drilled’: Ice Cores and the Cold War in Greenland,” Annals of Science 70, no. 1 (2013); Petersen, “The Politics of US Military Research in Greenland.” 46. These are outlined in annual permission applications to the Danish government, e.g., T. Dithmer, “Notits: Planer for amerikansk virksomhed på indlandsisen i 1955,” note, 23 August 1954 (Rigsarkivet, Udenrigsministeriet collection, 105.F.9.a, US Aktivitet udenfor Forsvarsområderne, 1952–1957, P.J.V. j.nr. 105.F.9, 23 August 1954); as well as in SIPRE and CRREL reports, e.g., Henri Bader, The Greenland Ice Sheet (Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1961) 47. Henri Bader, SIPRE Research Report 2, AD-014 366: Sorge’s Law of Densification of Snow on High Polar Glaciers (Wilmette, IL: US Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment, 1953); Henri Bader et al., SIPRE Technical Report 7, U-25920: Preliminary Investigations of Some Physical Properties of Snow (Wilmette, IL: US Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment, 1951); Henri Bader and D. Kuroiwa, CRREL Report no. M II-B, AD-287 052: Physics and Mechanics of Snow as a Material (Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1962). 48. Washburn did not appear as an author, as he had moved to Yale’s Department of Geology in 1960. 49. Philip G. Krueger, “Greenland, A Scientific Laboratory,” talk, US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1965 (LAC, Arctic Institute of North America collection, MG 28, I 79, Vol. 107, Folder 818), 6.

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50. A. G. Trudeau, “Significance of Research and Development in the Arctic,” in Man Living in the Arctic: Proceedings of a Conference, Quartermaster Research and Engineering Center, Natick, Massachusetts, 1, 2 December 1960, ed. F. R. Fisher (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1961), 7. 51. F. Frye et al., “Report on Greenland Operation, 1954,” in Corps of Engineers, Greenland Ice Cap Research Program, Studies Completed in 1954 1 (Vicksburg, MS: ArmyMRC, 1954). 52. First quote: Donald O. Rausch, Interim Report, Ice Tunnel, Tuto Area, Greenland, 1956 (Wilmette, IL: US Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment, 1957), 3; Second quote, Henri Bader et al., “SIPRE Report 20: Excavations and Installations at SIPRE Test Site, Site 2, Greenland, April 1955,” in Corps of Engineers, Greenland Ice Cap Research Program, Studies Completed in 1954 2 (Vicksburg, MS: Army-MRC, 1955), 1. 53. Elmer F. Clark, Technical Report 174: Camp Century—Evolution of Concept and History of Design, Construction, and Performance (Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1965), 8; also see Ingo Heidbrink’s contribution to this volume. 54. Chester C. Langway, “Early Ice Cores,” Geoscience News, 2006; Maiken Lolck, Klima, kold krig og iskerner (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2006); Martin-Nielsen, “The Deepest and Most Rewarding Hole Ever Drilled.” 55. Fae L. Korsmo, “The Genesis of the International Geophysical Year,” Physics Today 60, no. 7 (July 2007): 38. Also see Walter Sullivan, Assault on the Unknown: The International Geophysical Year (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961); Sydney Chapman, IGY: Year of Discovery, the Story of the International Geophysical Year (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959). 56. Hugh F. Bennett, “Traverse Operations on the Ross Ice Shelf, Summer 1957–1958,” 10 March 1958 (NARA, RG 27, Entry 3, Geophysical Year, 130/16/9/2, Box 3, Glaciology). 57. See US National Committee for the International Geophysical Year, “Polar Ice and Snow Studies, US National Committee for the International Geophysical Year, January 1958,” IGY Bulletin, no.7 (January 1958), CRREL Acc. No: 13016172; William O. Field, “IGY Glaciology Program,” in Review of the First Eleven Months of the International Geophysical Year: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Independent Offices of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Eighty-Fifth Congress, Second Session (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1958), CRREL Acc. No: 13016611. 20-32. 58. For discussion, Martin-Nielsen, “The Deepest and Most Rewarding Hole Ever Drilled,” 58–59. 59. See, for instance, T. Butkovich, CRREL Research Report 99: Studies on the Age Hardening of Processed Snow (Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1962), 1. 60. Long-Term Scientific Studies for the Standing Group North Atlantic Treaty Organization by Working Group III on Geophysics (von Karman Committee), March 1961, originally secret (NATO, VKC-EX1-GPIII). 61. This is succinctly captured by the name of one of the US military’s research bodies of the early Cold War, the Arctic Desert, and Tropic Information Center. 62. Farish, “Creating Cold War Climates,” 58.

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Bibliography Achermann, Dania. “Die Schnee- und Lawinenforschung in der Schweiz: Merkmale und Bedingungen des Wandels hin zu einer modernen wissenschaftlichen Disziplin 1931– 1943.” Master’s thesis, Universität Zürich, 2009. Ahlmann, Hans W. “The Contribution of Polar Expeditions to the Science of Glaciology (A Lecture Delivered to the Scott Polar Research Institute on 1 May 1948.” Polar Record 5 (1948): 324–31. Archer, Clive. “The United States Defence Areas in Greenland.” Cooperation and Conflict 23 (1988): 123–44. Arctic Institute of North America, Office of Naval Research, Arctic Research Advisory Committee. “Report from 25 October 1957.” Presented at the Hearings before the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, House of Representatives Eighty-Fifth Congress, second session, 22–24 January 1958. Bader, Henri. “Trends in Glaciology in Europe.” Geological Society of America Bulletin 60, no. 9 (September 1949): 1309–14. ———. SIPRE Research Report 2, AD-014 366: Sorge’s Law of Densification of Snow on High Polar Glaciers. Wilmette, IL: Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment, 1953. ———. The Greenland Ice Sheet. Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1961. Bader, Henri, B. Lyle Hansen, J. A. Joseph, and M. A. Sandgren. SIPRE Technical Report 7, U-25920: Preliminary Investigations of Some Physical Properties of Snow. Wilmette, IL: Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment, 1951. Bader, Henri, R. W. Waterhouse, J. Landauer, B. Lyle Hansen, James A. Bender, and T. Butkovich. “SIPRE Report 20: Excavations and Installations at SIPRE Test Site, Site 2, Greenland, April 1955.” In Corps of Engineers, Greenland Ice Cap Research Program, Studies Completed in 1954, vol. 2, 1–32. Vicksburg, MS: Army-MRC, 1955. Bader, Henri, and D. Kuroiwa. CRREL Report No. M II-B, AD-287 052: Physics and Mechanics of Snow as a Material. Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1962. Baird, P. D., and Robert P. Sharp. “Glaciology.” In Arctic Research: The Current Status of Research and Some Immediate Problems in the North American Arctic and Subarctic, edited by D. Rowley. Calgary: Arctic Institute of North America, 1955. Barth, Kai-Henrik. “The Politics of Seismology: Nuclear Testing, Arms Control, and the Transformation of a Discipline.” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003): 743–81. Beaudry, Emil G. “Air Potentialities of the Greenland Ice Cap in High Latitude Defense.” Faculty of the Air Command and Staff School of the Air University, Code no. 12. Alabama: Maxwell Air Force Base, 1949; National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), RG 319, Records of the Army Staff. Belangger, Dian Olson. Deep Freeze: The United States, the International Geophysical Year and the Origins of Antarctica’s Age of Science. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010. Bennett, Hugh F. “Traverse Operations on the Ross Ice Shelf, Summer 1957–1958.” 10 March 1958. NARA, RG 27, Entry 3, Geophysical Year, 130/16/9/2, Box 3, Glaciology.

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Benson, Carl S., and Charles R. Wilson. “Barry Bishop’s Research on the Sheer Moraines in the Thule Area, Northwest Greenland.” Mountain Research and Development 16, no. 3 (August 1996): 309–11. Beukel, Erik, Frede P. Jensen, and Jens Elo Rytter. Phasing Out the Colonial Status of Greenland, 1945–54: A Historical Study. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010. Brewster, Karen. “Oral History Interview.” Interview by Carl S. Benson. Byrd Polar Research Center Oral History Program, 22 June 2001. Butkovich, T. CRREL Research Report 99: Studies on the Age Hardening of Processed Snow. Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1962. Chapman, Sydney. IGY: Year of Discovery, the Story of the International Geophysical Year. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959. Chaturvedi, S. The Polar Regions: A Political Geography. Chichester: Wiley, 1996. Clark, Elmer F. Technical Report 174: Camp Century—Evolution of Concept and History of Design, Construction, and Performance. Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1965. Cloud, John. “Introduction: Special Guest-Edited Issue on the Earth Sciences in the Cold War.” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003): 629–33. Daugherty, Charles M. City Under the Ice: The Story of Camp Century. New York: Macmillan, 1963. Dithmer, T. “Notits: Planer for amerikansk virksomhed på indlandsisen i 1955.” Note, 23 August 1954. Rigsarkivet, Udenrigsministeriet collection, 105.F.9.a, US Aktivitet udenfor Forsvarsområderne, 1952–1957, P.J.V. j.nr. 105.F.9, 23 August 1954. Doel, Ronald E. “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA after 1945.” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003): 635–66. ———. “Quelle Place Pour les Sciences de l’Environnement Physique Dans l’Histoire Environnementale?” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 56, no. 4 (2009): 137– 64. Farish, Matthew. “Creating Cold War Climates: The Laboratories of American Globalism.” In Environmental History and the Cold War, edited by J. R. McNeill and C. R. Unger, 51–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Field, William O. “IGY Glaciology Program.” In Review of the First Eleven Months of the International Geophysical Year: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Independent Offices of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Eighty-Fifth Congress, Second Session, 20–32. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1958. CRREL Acc. No: 13016611. Flint, Richard F. SIPRE Report 15. Snow, Ice and Permafrost in Military Operations, 1950. Wilmette, IL: US Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment, 1950. Fogelson, Nancy. “Greenland: Strategic Base on a Northern Defense Line.” Journal of Military History 53, no. 1 (January 1989): 51–63. Fristrup, Børge. The Greenland Ice Cap. Translated by David Stoner. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966. Frye, F., P. Beigbeder, J. Smith, C. Karstens, J. Cox, and E. Wells. “Report on Greenland Operation, 1954.” In Corps of Engineers, Greenland Ice Cap Research Program, Studies Completed in 1954, vol. 1, 24–48. Vicksburg, MS: Army-MRC, 1955.

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Goldthwait, Richard P. “Glaciology: Report of the University Committee on Polar Research, National Academy of Sciences, 1956.” Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Arctic Institute of North America Fonds, MG28, I79, Volume 212, Folder 29. Heymann, Matthias, Henrik Knudsen, Maiken Lolck, Henry Nielsen, Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen, and Christopher Jacob Ries. “Exploring Greenland: Science and Technology in Cold War Settings.” Scientia Canadensis 33, no. 2 (2010): 11–42. Joint War Plans Committee. “Strategic Importance of the Arctic and Subarctic Regions, JWPC 484/1.” 6 November 1946. Reference PM-392; NARA, RG 218, JCS Geographic File A48-50, Box 2, CCS 381 Arctic Area, 10-1-46, Section 1-2. Korsmo, Fae L. “The Early Cold War and US Arctic Research.” In Extremes: Oceanography’s Adventures at the Poles, edited by Keith R. Benson and Helen M. Rozwadowski, 173–200. Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2007. ———. “The Genesis of the International Geophysical Year.” Physics Today 60, no. 7 (July 2007): 38–43. ———. “Glaciology, the Arctic, and the US Military, 1945–58.” In New Spaces of Exploration: Geographies of Discovery in the 20th Century, edited by Simon Naylor and James R. Ryan, 125–47. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010. Krueger, Philip G. “Greenland, A Scientific Laboratory.” Talk, US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1965. LAC, Arctic Institute of North America collection, MG 28, I 79, Vol. 107, Folder 818. Lackenbauer, P. Whitney, and Matthew Farish. “The Cold War on Canadian Soil: Militarizing a Northern Environment.” Environmental History 12, no. 4 (October 2007): 920–50. Lange, G. Robert. CRREL Technical Report 95: Rotary Drilling and Coring in Permafrost, Part 1: Preliminary Investigation, Fort Churchill, Manitoba. Hanover, NH: CRREL, 1968. Langway, Chester C. “Early Ice Cores.” Geoscience News, 2006, 5–9. Livingston, C. W. CRREL Technical Report 71: Bomb Penetration Tests, Fort Churchill, Canada. Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1960. Lolck, Maiken. Klima, kold krig og iskerner. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2006. Hamblin, Jacob Darwin. Oceanographers and the Cold War: Disciples of Marine Science. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005. Hummel, Laurel J. “The US Military as Geographical Agent: The Case of Cold War Alaska.” Geographical Review 95, no. 1 (January 2005): 47–72. Knudsen, Henrik. “Cold War, Ionospheric Research in Greenland, and the Politics of Rockets: A Study of the Ill-Fated Operation PCA 68.” Aarhus: Aarhus University Centre for Science Studies, forthcoming. Levere, Trevor H. Science and the Canadian Arctic: A Century of Exploration, 1818–1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Lidegaard, Mads. Grønlands Historie. Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, 1991. Martin-Nielsen, Janet. “The Other Cold War: The United States and Greenland’s Ice Sheet Environment, 1948–1966.” Journal of Historical Geography 38, no. 1 (January 2012): 69–80. ———. Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Politics at the Center of Greenland. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

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———. “‘The Deepest and Most Rewarding Hole Ever Drilled’: Ice Cores and the Cold War in Greenland.” Annals of Science 70, no.1 (2013): 47–70. ———. “Security and the Nation: Glaciology in Early Cold War Greenland.” In Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice, edited by Ronald E. Doel, Kristine C. Harper, and Matthias Heymann, 99–118. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Petersen, Nikolaj. “SAC at Thule: Greenland in the US Polar Strategy.” Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 90–115. ———. “The Politics of US Military Research in Greenland in the Early Cold War.” Centaurus 55, no. 3 (August 2013): 294–318. PJV Journal, 27 February 1960. Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives), Udenrigsministeriet collection, 105.F.10. Powell, Richard C. “Science, Sovereignty and Nation: Canada and the Legacy of the International Geophysical Year, 1957–1958.” Journal of Historical Geography 34, no. 4 (October 2008): 618–38. Rausch, Donald O. Interim Report, Ice Tunnel, Tuto Area, Greenland, 1956. Wilmette, IL: US Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment, 1957. Ries, Christopher Jacob. “On Frozen Ground: William E. Davies and the Military Geology of Northern Greenland, 1952–1960.” Polar Journal 2, no. 2 (December 2012): 334–57. Robinson, Michael F. The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Sörlin, Sverker. “The Global Warming That Did Not Happen: Historicizing Glaciology and Climate Change.” In Nature’s End: Environment and History, edited by Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde, 93–114. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ———. “Narratives and Counter Narratives of Climate Change: North Atlantic Glaciology and Meteorology, c. 1930–1955.” Journal of Historical Geography 35, no. 2 (April 2009): 237–55. Sullivan, Walter. Assault on the Unknown: The International Geophysical Year. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961. Trudeau, A. G. “Significance of Research and Development in the Arctic.” In Man Living in the Arctic: Proceedings of a Conference, Quartermaster Research and Engineering Center, Natick, Massachusetts, 1, 2 December 1960, edited by F. R. Fisher, 7–13. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1961. US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. “Organization and Function, US Army Corps of Engineers, June 1962.” LAC, Arctic Institute of North America Collection, MG 28, I 79, Volume 211, Folder 211-15. US National Committee for the International Geophysical Year. “Polar Ice and Snow Studies, US National Committee for the International Geophysical Year, January 1958.” IGY Bulletin, no. 7 (January 1958): 5–6. CRREL Acc. No: 13016172. US Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment. “Report 1, 1950.” Wilmette, IL: US Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment, 1950; Arktisk Institut, Copenhagen, Box SIPRE Reports 1–8. Wager, Walter. Camp Century: City Under the Ice. Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1962. Wright, E. A. CRREL’s First 25 Years, 1961–1986. Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1986.

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CHAPTER 3

“Camp Century” and “Project Iceworm” Greenland as a Stage for US Military Service Rivalries Ingo Heidbrink

One of the first things that comes to mind when thinking about Greenland,

or more specifically Inuit culture, is the igloo. While the Inuit word iglu is not limited to ice or snow as construction material, in most other languages the term is associated directly with shelters or houses built out of snow or ice. Of course the igloo is not and has never been the predominant building structure of the Greenlandic Inuit, but is used as a temporary shelter during hunting trips; nevertheless igloos are an ingenious use of ice and snow as construction material in subzero climates. This chapter will explore how the US military tried to use ice and snow for the construction of large-scale military installations on Greenland during the Cold War and how the concepts developed on Greenland later on were applied in the context of Antarctic research. In addition this chapter will explore to what extent the US military activities and projects on Greenland need to be understood as part of the rivalries between the various branches of the US military.

US-Greenland Relations Prior to the Cold War Despite Greenland’s geostrategic position in the middle of the Atlantic and in the middle of the shortest route between Moscow and Washington, the US government showed little interest in Greenland up to the beginning of World War II. Individual politicians had occasionally floated the idea of the United States acquiring Greenland, but the idea was never considered seriously, in particular after the Alaska purchase, which was understood by many contemporary politicians as a substantial mistake (Seward’s Folly). Theoretically the Monroe Doctrine covered Greenland as part of the Western Hemisphere, but the cryolite mine in Ivigtut remained the only real interest of the United States on Greenland up to the outbreak of World War II. A US strategic or military

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interest in Greenland did simply not exist. A Danish company operated the cryolite mine, but most of the mineral (sodium hexafluoraluminate) quarried was shipped directly to the United States to be used for soda production and, more important, aluminum synthesis, which was completely dependent on the availability of natural cryolite prior to the development of its artificial synthesis during World War II. One of the few other occasions when Greenland gained public attention in the United States was when Robert E. Peary did a wide range of exploration in northern Greenland during the 1890s,1 before he shifted his focus to the conquest of the North Pole using the Canadian Arctic as a stepping-stone toward the pole. While the miners at Ivigtut as well as Peary’s expedition had been in contact with the Inuit, neither group used ice and snow as building materials; rather they considered these materials mainly as an obstacle to overcome. When it came to construction, they resorted to traditional European and American styles and materials, which is clearly documented in the descriptions by Josephine Diebitsch Peary, Robert E. Peary’s wife, who accompanied him during one of the expeditions.2 In summary, Greenland was not of any real interest to the official United States. When the United States negotiated the purchase of the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1916, the treaty even included a secret clause that the United States would accept the sole Danish sovereignty over the whole island of Greenland.3 Earlier ideas of acquiring Greenland were given up completely, and from the perspective of the United States, Greenland was just a frozen island without any relevance for US foreign policy or military activities.

US Military Activities on Greenland during World War II The first US military branch that ever became directly involved with Greenland was eventually the United States Coast Guard (USCG) in the context of the International Ice Patrol (IIP).4 The IIP had been established as a consequence of the Titanic disaster in 1912, and ever since USCG cutters sailed the waters between Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Greenland to survey the iceberg situation during the season.5 Nevertheless the USCG cutters serving in the IPP normally did not visit Greenlandic ports or became directly involved on Greenland, but at least the USCG gathered experience with operations in the Greenlandic region, while the other US service branches had no interest in the region at all. This situation changed dramatically with the outbreak of World War II and the German occupation of Denmark as the colonial mother nation of Greenland in 1940. The United States realized that if access to the cryolite mine was to be secured and German occupation of the island avoided, at least some kind of action was needed. Besides developing a system that guaranteed

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the supply for the island’s population by civilian US sources, two other steps were taken: the USCG detached a small group of cutter-men for the protection of the mine in Ivigtut, and more important, a treaty on the defense of the island during the war was negotiated between the United States and the Greenlandic government in 1941.6 The treaty granted the US military more or less unlimited and unrestricted access to Greenland in exchange for the military protection of the island, as an extremely strange situation arose with Denmark being occupied by Nazi Germany, but Greenland not—a situation that resulted in the colonial institutions and administration on Greenland now acting like the government of a de facto sovereign nation. After the treaty was signed in 1941, the USCG remained the most active US military branch on Greenland, despite the fact that the number of members of other US service branches on Greenland soon became much larger than the number of USCG personnel deployed to Greenland. But it was the USCG and in particular the Greenland Patrol that gathered the most intimate knowledge of the island and developed at least a certain level of cooperation with local communities.7 By far the largest US military operation on Greenland was the construction of the air bases Bluie West One and Bluie West Eight.8 The location of both bases was identified based on preliminary exploratory work by the University of Michigan9 and final surveys by the US Army Air Forces.10 The main purpose of the new US air bases on Greenland was to provide a refueling stop for airplanes ferried from the United States to the European theater of war by the newly established Air Corps Ferrying Command.11 Once the two air bases were completed, the US Army was the largest branch of the US military on Greenland, but in fact it was not the US Army itself, but the US Army Air Forces.

Early Post–World War II Developments After the end of World War II, the United States continued the use of the two air bases on Greenland, and when the US Air Force was finally established in 1947 as a US military branch independent from the US Army, the responsibility for the bases on Greenland was handed over from the army to the air force. In addition the US Air Force got the sole responsibility for the air base in Thule that was constructed in the early 1950s. As the USCG had returned to peacetime duties after the end of World War II, the US Air Force was now the only major American player on Greenland at the beginning of the Cold War. Even with the International Ice Patrol being the beginning of US military activities on Greenland, ice remained an obstacle and nothing else, in particular not a material that could be directly used for any military purpose.

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Nevertheless the idea of using ice for larger military constructions was not completely strange or new to the US military. While smaller construction like temporary snow shelters have been built and used by military all around the globe whenever operating in snowy areas, ice was considered during World War II as construction material for various purposes. Ice was even considered as the main building material for an aircraft carrier during World War II. Based on ideas and concepts developed by Geoffrey Pike, the USS Habbakuk was designed as a supercarrier built out of an ice alloy named pykrete. The alloy consisted of ice and wood pulp, and as long as the temperature of the alloy remained below freezing, it proved a suitable material, in many aspects even superior to traditional materials like steel or steel alloys.12 Nevertheless the USS Habbakuk was never built, as the concept for a floating air base made out of ice was too complex and required too many resources.13 Shortly after the beginning of the Cold War, it became obvious that Greenland would have at least comparable high geostrategic relevance for the new conflict as during World War II. While the US Air Force developed the Strategic Bomber Command and the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW-line) as key elements of the US military activities in the context of the Cold War, the US Navy initiated a technological development of similar relevance for the Cold War and in particular the polar theater of the Cold War with the nuclear-powered submarine fleet. Soon after Admiral Hyman Rickover’s idea of nuclear-powered submarines had become a reality with the deployment of the USS Nautilus, these submarines proved their ability to operate under the ice of the polar basin.14 As the nuclear submarines were capable not only of operating under the ice, but more important of delivering nuclear ballistic missiles, they became, together with the strategic bomber fleet of the US Air Force, the most relevant weapon systems of the Cold War. In other words, the US Air Force and the US Navy shared 100 percent of the weapon systems that were really relevant in the context of the Cold War, while the US Army was basically not involved in this business. If the US Army wanted to continue as a branch of the US armed services of equal relevance to the US Air Force and US Navy in the context of the Cold War, the headquarters needed to come up with new ideas and proposals, which they finally did, with a project that looked like a Hollywood science fiction movie.15 It was obvious that ballistic missiles able to deliver nuclear bombs or warheads were the most relevant weapons category and that the US Army needed to participate in this development to compete with the US Air Force and Navy. But as opposed to the navy and air force, the army had no platform able to deliver such weapons from a midway point between the United States and the Soviet Union. The only landmass that could be used for a potential new US Army program close to the Soviet Union was the north of Greenland—a hostile environment that was never before used for large-scale military activities.

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Camp Century Camp Century was developed by the US Army as a first step toward using the north of Greenland as a staging area for the delivery of nuclear missiles against the Soviet Union. The basic idea of the Camp Century proposal was to establish a military complex completely independent from all external supplies for extended periods of time and sheltered by the Greenlandic ice cap itself. As such the project would have provided conditions comparable to the submarines of the US Navy and the strategic bomber fleet of the US Air Force, meaning basically a military platform that would be able to survive a first nuclear strike and be usable for nuclear retaliation. The project included a number of severe obstacles of various kinds.16 The technology required for the project needed to be developed from scratch; financing for the project needed to be secured, despite the fact that the US Navy and US Air Force could already provide delivery platforms for nuclear weapons in the Arctic; and finally Greenland was still Danish territory, and the new defense treaty of 1951 had limited the liberties the US military had on Greenland, in particular in the context of the construction of new military installations.17 In summary the prospects for the new project of the US Army were not too good. But if the US Army wanted to continue as a branch of major relevance in the Cold War, the options available to the top decision levels were limited at the best. Possible alternatives to the Greenland project would have been intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to be delivered from fixed silos in the northern parts of the United States and maybe Canada or ICBMs stationed on mobile delivery platforms within the United States. Both options not only would have caused a severe threat to the United States itself in the case of a Soviet nuclear strike, but also would not have provided a point of delivery for nuclear weapons as close to the Soviet Union as the US Navy and US Air Force platforms that were already a reality at the end of the 1950s. Consequently the US Army continued its own Greenland ideas despite all obstacles. A key component of these ideas was the use of ice as construction material for future army installations on Greenland. The first step was the construction of an experimental US military base under or, better, within the Greenlandic ice cap: Camp Century. The actual construction of Camp Century began in 1959 and was based on preliminary works and surveys by various US Army units since the early 1950s.18 During the feasibility studies it became clear not only that the whole installation should be built under the ice, so that the ice itself served as a shelter against the harsh climate conditions and limited at the same time the risk of detection by long-range surveillance, but also that a nuclear power station seemed to be the only feasible solution for power supply to the whole installation. Conventional power sources would have resulted in too much of a logistical challenge,

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and renewable energy production was not advanced enough to serve as the main supply for any station of substantial size.19 In addition the US Army was convinced that if they could build up and operate a modular nuclear power plant on Greenland, they could do the same under all other environmental conditions on the globe.20 While this might have been true, there was still the problem that Camp Century should be built not only outside the United States but even outside the established military defense area of the US air base Thule. Consequently the whole project needed to be permitted by the Danish authorities, and such permission was basically granted for research projects only and not for military installations. Thus the US Army began to mask the whole Camp Century operation as a research station and a science-driven project. Unlike most other US Army projects overseas, the Camp Century project was communicated intensively via the media to the broad American public, and a short documentary on the whole project was even released. Nicknamed the “City under the Ice,” the project reached high media attention and was described not only in various books,21 but also in popular science magazines and even featured on prime-time television.22 Thus the project achieved, besides its direct military and scientific aim, another goal that was of major importance for the US Army: presence in mainstream US media. While submarines of the US Navy and jets of the US Air Force were regularly featured in the various media, the US Army now had a comparable futuristic project to be discussed in public. Camp Century was the tool for the US Army to explain to the American public that they no longer were the traditional army that had fought World War II, but were as similarly advanced in science and technology and as future oriented as the other two large service branches. The US Air Force and NASA had joined the race to the upper levels of the atmosphere and outer space. The US Navy was conquering the deep oceans with nuclear submarines and experimental research vessels, like the bathyscaphe Triest, and in January 1960 finally reached the deepest point of the world oceans. With the Camp Century project, the US Army embarked, with a substantial publicity effect, into the challenge of conquering the ice caps and using the ice itself for construction as the ultimate challenge. The search for positive publicity included even elements that were normally completely unthinkable in the context of the development of secret military installations. On 25 June 1960, the US Army and the Boy Scouts of America announced that one member of the American boy scouts and one member of the Danish boy scouts would join the army crew of Camp Century for overwintering at the City under the Ice during 1960–61.23 In the end, the US Army treated the whole Camp Century operation basically as if it would have been really a pure research operation carried out by the army on Greenland. But as is often the case, looking at the details provides another picture. When, for example, the US Army on 22 March 1960 announced via the me-

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dia that Camp Century would be provided with energy by a nuclear power plant,24 the same article mentioned that the Danish government had approved the permission to operate the nuclear power station at the Advance Base of the Army’s Polar Research and Development Center, meaning Camp Century, only on the same day. Contrary official documents by the US Army clearly confirmed that the US Army was not only planning but had begun years earlier with the actual construction of the modular nuclear power plant.25 In other words, the project was not the openly presented research project operated by the US Army, but for years such a secret and highly classified project that even the NATO partner in which territory it would take place had been informed not at the early stages of the project, but only when the project had already become a reality and just waited to be flown into Greenland.

Project Iceworm While the information on Camp Century became public in 1960, the plans for the related Project Iceworm remained secret, and most of the information on this project is still today highly classified and not accessible for research. Erik D. Weiss’s 2001 article in the Journal of Cold War Studies26 not only revealed many details of Project Iceworm for the first time, but is still, together with Nikolaj Petersen’s research on the project,27 one of the most comprehensive historical accounts of the whole project. The basic facts of Project Iceworm as described by Weiss are the following: Based on the experiences of Camp Century, a wide area of the Greenlandic ice cap would have been under-tunneled and converted into a large US Army base powered by nuclear power plants. The whole system would have been sheltered by the ice of the ice cap itself and more or less completely invisible for any kind of long-range reconnaissance. The main purpose of the base would have been stationing of nuclear missiles undetectable by the Soviet Union and with at least theoretical perfect first strike or counterstrike capacities.28 Several hundred two-stage missiles would have been stationed in a mobile configuration inside a tunnel system covering more than fifty thousand square miles and most important would have been in constant motion. Twenty-two independent control centers would have controlled the launch of the six hundred missiles, and a total of eleven thousand men would have been needed to operate the whole system.29 In summary Project Iceworm looked much more like a phantasmagorical chimera than a feasible idea for a new weapon system. Even against of the background of the Cold War, with its enormous investments into development of new weapon technology and in particular of missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, as well as the research on ice alloys for various construction purposes,30 Project Ice-

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worm seemed basically an idea without any chance of actual realization. Nevertheless, with Camp Century already being a reality, the question needs to be raised whether the US Army itself believed in the feasibility of the whole Iceworm idea. The experiments at Camp Century suggested that at least some research had been carried out in preparation for Iceworm besides the simple fact of the development of the camp itself and its nuclear power station. For example, the US Army had tested the use of rail-based transportation in one of the larger trenches/tunnels at Camp Century.31 But did a short track of several hundred meters only really provide reliable information for the construction of a rail system of several thousand kilometers with several hundreds of missiles in permanent motion on these rails? Were the experiences gathered at Camp Century for the use of ice as a construction material sufficient for a project like Iceworm? In conclusion it needs to be questioned whether Camp Century, despite its reasonable dimensions, could provide any answer on the question of a possible realization of a project of the dimensions of Iceworm. In addition there was the issue of Greenland being Danish territory and thus all operations of the US Army on the island bound by the regulations of the defense treaty of 1951.32 While a comparable small project like Camp Century was acceptable for the Danish/Greenlandic government, there is no evidence that a project of the dimensions of Iceworm would have been acceptable or that the US Army had ever discussed the idea of Iceworm with the respective Danish/Greenlandic authorities. With Project Iceworm basically a project whose chances of realization had been very doubtful at best, it needs to be asked why the US Army invested so many resources into the Camp Century project. One explanation might be the rivalry between the different branches of the US armed services suggested by Petersen,33 or in other words the fact that the US Army needed to prove their relevance in the context of the Cold War. Another or additional answer might have been the simple fact that the US Army used Camp Century mainly as a research platform for operations under extreme climate conditions and/or the use of ice as construction material in a military context, and thus the US Army had a real interest in the project that was not depending on Iceworm.

Operation and the Late Years of Camp Century As opposed to Project Iceworm, Camp Century as a military base using ice and snow as a major construction material had already become a reality in 1959. How did the City under the Ice influence US-Greenlandic relations, what knowledge was gathered in the context of the use of ice and snow for the construction of military installations, and what finally happened to the camp? Most historical studies about Greenland written by Danish or Green-

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landic historians fail to even mention Camp Century or just include very brief comments about it in the sections on the history of Thule Air Base. Official contact between the crew of the camp and the Greenlandic population was nonexistent and actual contact at least close to nil.34 A few traveling bands of Polar Inuit stumbled upon the few surface installations of Camp Century, and even some bartering was reported,35 but these contacts were rare and mainly with the native and remote Greenlandic population, who were not in contact with any groups outside Greenland. In the end it was just accidental contact between human beings who struggled for survival under the extreme conditions of the Greenlandic ice cap in one way or another. Basically the same situation of modern and traditional concepts not influencing each other applied in the context of experiences with ice and snow as construction material. For the Inuit, ice and snow remained the traditional construction material for temporary shelters, the iglu. Modern knowledge gathered by the US Army in the context of using ice and snow for construction purposes beyond the construction of an igloo was not made available to the Inuits. Construction of civilian buildings by Inuit and Danes living on Greenland no longer included ice and snow, but concrete, corrugated sheet iron, and so on. But what about Camp Century itself—did it deliver any answers on the questions the US Army was looking for? As stated earlier, the main goals of the whole project included the use of ice and snow as construction materials and to prove that a completely independent military installation could be operated in polar conditions with a nuclear power plant as a central element, as only such a power plant was able to make the base independent from permanent fuel supplies and consequently independent from a steady stream of supplies. After the reactor in 1960 reached criticality for the first time and various operational tests were conducted,36 it supplied Camp Century with enough energy for all operations, and the previously used diesel generators turned into a kind of backup system. Thus the US Army had achieved its goal to demonstrate that a modular nuclear power plant could be used successfully. Another of the main goals of Camp Century was to test the actual construction of the camp based on trenches cut into the ice cap and on ice and snow coverage as a structural element. While this system initially seemed to be a cost-effective and quick method for the construction of a military installation in the ice cap, as prefabricated standardized buildings could be used in the steel- and snow-covered trenches, the de facto experiences with the trenches finally proved the opposite. Due to ice melting in the trenches, buildup of snow, and most importantly actual movements of the ice itself, the trenches required a substantial amount of maintenance and in the end could not be maintained on a permanent base.37 Permanent monitoring of the trenches clearly demonstrated that it would not have been possible to use the original trenches for an extended period of time, and consequently the whole idea of any permanent installation under the ice

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cap needed to be abandoned. The actual experiences with the comparable small research base Camp Century forced the US Army to realize that nature itself would make any project of the dimensions of Iceworm not feasible, and this argument could not be ignored even by those groups inside the army who might have still dreamt of hundreds of missiles to be stationed under the Greenlandic ice as an alternative to nuclear submarines and strategic bombers. In the end Camp Century became best known to the world due to a side project that was by no means of major relevance to the US Army when the whole project began.38 As the whole project was officially designated as a scientific research project and the Danish/Greenlandic permission for the project was given only based on such research and not based on the provisions of the defense treaty of 1951, some real scientific work was integrated into the project from its early beginnings. By far the most important of these projects was the drilling of ice cores from the surface of the ice cap all the way down through the whole ice cap. Although other ice-core projects had been carried out on Greenland earlier, the Camp Century ice cores were the first that continued through all layers of the ice cap and thus opened a complete climate archive for the last ten thousands of years.39 Although it took several years to analyze the complete data from the three ice cores derived during the operation of Camp Century, the research finally clearly showed that ice cores were an appropriate tool to develop climate archives for very long periods, and the cores and the related research are still considered as groundbreaking research.40 Altogether the ice-core drilling at Camp Century as well as a number of other research projects carried out after the removal of the nuclear power plant clearly demonstrated that the whole Camp Century project had undergone a severe shift after the US Army needed to realize that the whole concept of a permanent station under the ice was at least somewhat unrealistic and consequently seemed to have abandoned all activities related to Project Iceworm. After the removal of the modular nuclear power plant and abandoning all Iceworm-related activities, Camp Century had become basically a much larger and more sophisticated but principally very comparable version of the former Station Eismitte established and operated by the German scientist Alfred Wegener during 1930–31.41 Nevertheless Camp Century included, besides the basic necessities, a wide range of amenities and thus provided living conditions very similar to those on every other US military base overseas,42 while Eismitte was a small and isolated research station with only one living quarter, which served also as the main laboratory.43 The main idea of both stations was to use the ice itself as a shelter against the harsh conditions on the ice cap. Finally the largest threat to both stations was also very similar: the movement of the ice cap itself and thus that the enormous and uncontrollable forces of the moving ice would destroy the research stations and nothing could be done to save them.

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As the problems of movements of the ice cap became more and more obvious over the years after the construction of Camp Century in 1959–60, and as military relevance of the project dwindled when it became clear that Iceworm would remain only a dream of some planners at the US Army headquarters, operations at Camp Century were scaled down substantially. With the modular nuclear power plant already shut down in 1963 and finally returned to the United States in 1964,44 the station had lost one of its core qualities, as it could no longer be operated independent from a steady stream of supplies. Despite the fact that these supplies could be brought in from the US air base Thule via Camp Tuto and a trail over the ice cap, the transportation route that had already been used for the construction of Camp Century, the whole installation was basically used only as a summer research station after the removal of the nuclear power plant. Finally Camp Century was abandoned in 1966 without removing the actual construction from the ice cap, as during the last years of the operation of the City under the Ice the amount of snow and ice that needed to be removed inside the station for safe operation of the complex already averaged 120 tons per month, which could only be handled by time-consuming manual labor.45 Removing the remains of the station would have been an even greater challenge and more labor-intensive work than the actual construction less than a decade before, as the whole complex was now not only completely buried under ice and snow but had already begun to sink into the ice cap. While most of the construction had been done in open trenches close to the surface of the ice cap, the removal would have required an excavation-type project of substantial size. When Camp Century was finally revisited by a team of the US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in 1969,46 it became obvious not only that the whole station had been severely damaged, but that in fact it was basically crushed by the moving ice. All previous estimates of the movements and the forces to which a subsurface installation on the Greenlandic ice cap was exposed to had been way too low. Despite the fact that some of the prefabricated buildings inside Camp Century still remained more or less intact, the whole support system of trenches and tunnels (metal arches and steel beams) was more or less destroyed and no longer usable. The movements of the ice cap had resulted in a complete destruction of the installation in only one decade. A side note: As the whole remaining Camp Century installation had not been removed when it was revisited in 1969, it is certain that the physical remains of Camp Century are still today somewhere in the Greenlandic ice cap, or as Frank J. Leskovitz states on his most informative webpage on Camp Century, “Today, it is likely that most of Camp Century has been reclaimed by the ice. Its twisted wreckage is a permanently frozen memorial to Man’s desire to explore even the most hostile places of Earth.”47

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The “Logic” Behind the Project, or Who Cares about Greenland? As discussed earlier in the chapter, the whole story of Camp Century seemed to be much more related to rivalries between the major branches of the US armed services on the background of the Cold War than to the Cold War with its main frontline between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective allies. Nevertheless it seems that there is at least one other aspect that needs to be mentioned: Project Iceworm was one of the largest land-based military projects ever proposed during the Cold War. Only the perverse military logic of the Cold War could bring the US military to the point to even think about a project of the dimensions of Camp Century / Project Iceworm in such a hostile environment as the Greenlandic ice cap. For the technocrats in the headquarters of the US Army, the ice caps of the polar regions were just another place on the globe that could be conquered for military purposes, like outer space or the deep oceans. But, finally, the whole concept of Camp Century / Project Iceworm revealed another important structure of the thinking of US military planners. Instead of dealing with nature itself, their main goal was to create an artificial environment in or under the Greenlandic ice cap that would have enabled them to transfer the typical way of life on an American military base into any kind of hostile environment. While indigenous people had learned over centuries or even millennia to develop skills that enabled them to live with the hostile environmental conditions, the ultimate goal of the US military planners was to avoid contact with the environment as much as possible and to bring American Main Street to Greenland, but interestingly not to those parts of Greenland that were already settled, but to a region of Greenland that was basically a blank area on the charts prior to the construction of Camp Century. Finally they needed to realize that nature behaves according to its own rules and would not accept their ideas to become a reality. After millions of dollars had been spent, the main result of the whole Camp Century / Project Iceworm initiative was a simple fact known by indigenous people as well as Greenlanders of European descent for at least several centuries: the ice cap is such a hostile environment that it cannot be used for human activities on a permanent base regardless of how much effort might be spent. In addition the project demonstrated a hubris that seemed to be typical of many Arctic activities of the superpowers during the Cold War. While knowledge about the deep oceans or outer space could be obtained only from scientists and therefore were a group military planners used to consult for their projects, the best knowledge on the conditions of an environment like the Greenlandic ice cap rested not only with the small group of scientists involved with various kinds of polar research, but also with indigenous people living in or at least close to these environments—people to whom the military planners often gave not even a single thought and definitely were not used to

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speak with. A single, even brief consultation with the local people of North Greenland would have provided the information to the military planners of the US Army that the Greenlandic ice cap is by no means a hostile but stable environment, but is more like a hostile animal that moves permanently and thus cannot be used for permanent constructions of the style that would have been required for Camp Century / Project Iceworm. This lack of communication with local people also sheds light on another characteristic of the whole project.48 While the Camp Century part of the project was more or less openly communicated in the United States and up to a minor degree with or in Denmark, at least for a military project of the Cold War period, it was not made public with the people who were most directly affected by the project. While there were articles about the project in major US newspapers and the project was featured on US television, no evidence could be found that any Greenlandic newspaper had ever published a single line about Camp Century, despite the fact that the related Project Iceworm would have made Greenland a prime target area for any Soviet nuclear first strike or counterstrike. In other words, the whole Camp Century / Project Iceworm complex followed a pattern that was already observed earlier in the context of the development of Thule Air Base on Greenland and might have been typical for the approach of the US military toward indigenous people on Greenland during the whole Cold War period. While the US military communicated at least up to a certain degree with the respective authorities in Copenhagen, they left it to the Danish authorities to decide if the project would be communicated to the local population. While in the case of Thule Air Base it was unavoidable that the Danish/Greenlandic authorities communicate the project to local people due to the related resettlement,49 there was simply no need for the Danish/Greenlandic government to do the same in the context of Camp Century / Project Iceworm. Greenland remained an area in which the US military could basically do whatever they wanted even though Greenland was not subject to US jurisdiction. Maybe it can yet be stated that the US military enjoyed these liberties not only despite the fact that Greenland was not under US jurisdiction, but furthermore mainly because of this fact. Establishing a project like Camp Century on US territory would have unavoidably resulted in incorporation of state and regional decision bodies into the whole planning and decision process. Designating the whole project to be carried out on Greenland meant at the same time that the US Army had no need to deal with any non-federal US decision body and needed only to secure the support by the central Danish administration in Copenhagen, which was not only thousands of kilometers away from Greenland, but often more concerned with domestic Danish issues than with what was going on in its remote Arctic territory on Greenland. From the point of view of the US Army, the factual situation was very comparable

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to the situation the US Navy and the US Air Force had to face for their major Cold War developments. In fact all three branches of the US military operated up to a certain degree in open access environments with sovereignty rights not settled at all or at least without proper enforcement of legally established sovereignty. In the case of the remote areas of northern Greenland, the US Army could even rely on a certain tradition of operating in the area without direct interference or control by Danish/Greenlandic authorities. Beginning with the activities of Robert E. Peary in the north of Greenland that took place at a time when even the official legal status of northern Greenland could be up to a certain degree considered as unsettled in the context of sovereignty and continuing during World War II when the treaty of 1941 provided the US military basically carte blanche for all activities on Greenland,50 it had become kind of habit for the US military to think about Greenland as an area beyond any US or foreign political control. The US Army had become used to thinking about Greenland and in particular the remote areas of the north Greenlandic ice cap in a way as terra nullius. While in terms of international law this was definitely not the case, as even the United States itself had accepted the Danish claim for the sovereignty over the whole of Greenland in connection with the purchase of the Virgin Islands, it was a convenient way to develop ideas that helped the US Army to survive in the service rivalries among the major branches of the US armed services during the Cold War. But what about the Danish government? As mentioned earlier, the Danish government in Copenhagen was not too concerned about what was going on in far-distant Greenland. For Denmark as a NATO member, it might have been the easiest way to show loyalty to the Western defense organization by simply not asking too many questions about what the United States as the lead nation of NATO was actually doing in Greenland, in particular as Denmark had a somewhat special relation with NATO due to the Soviet occupation of the Baltic island of Bornholm in the early post–World War II years. Therefore accepting US Army activities on Greenland instead of on the Danish mainland and most important officially not even being aware of the real purpose of these activities, as Denmark seemed officially to have been notified only about Camp Century but not about Project Iceworm, might have been the Danish way of supporting the US military during the Cold War. Even if there is no direct evidence available that can support such a theory, it would fit into a pattern that already had occurred in the context of the socalled H. C. Hansen letter of 1957. When the Danish prime minister was approached by the US ambassador to Denmark Val Peterson regarding whether the Danish authorities should be informed if the United States would place nuclear weapons on Greenland, he replied in a highly classified but personal and informal letter, “I do not believe that your remarks require any comments

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from my side.”51 In other words, the Danish prime minister applied a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding the question of nuclear weapons on Greenland, and it’s highly probable that the whole Camp Century / Project Iceworm complex was subject to the same policy.

Conclusion In conclusion it can be stated that Greenland was an ideal stage for the development of any Cold War–related US Army projects and of course for research regarding the use of ice and snow for military construction purposes. The Danish government voluntarily decided not to interfere and not to ask any questions regarding the projects as long as they were carried out in the remote and uninhabited areas of Greenland, and critical voices in the United States were more or less completely silenced due to the simple fact that Camp Century / Project Iceworm were projects carried out in a foreign territory. The final result of this combination was the fact that Greenland could be used by the US Army during the heyday of the Cold War as a kind of sandbox for experiments of all kind with only two limiting factors: financing available for the projects and obstacles caused by nature itself. While the first question was obviously relevant in the context of the service rivalries among the various branches of the US armed services, in particular as the US Navy and the US Air Force already had systems available that could deliver a nuclear first strike as well as a counterstrike and therefore all efforts by the US Army would have best resulted in a redundant system, the final end of the plans of the US Army to use the Greenlandic ice cap as a staging area for nuclear weapons resulted from lessons learned by nature itself. The operational experience with Camp Century clearly demonstrated that Project Iceworm would remain forever a dream of some US Army planners. Whether these planners had the hubris of being able to deal with the ice cap and the related environment or whether they used the Iceworm idea simply to gain a better position for the US Army inside the service rivalries, while knowing that the project would remain a fantastic dream only, needs to remain for now one of the unanswered questions of this essay, but both answers seem to be possible. Interestingly enough, the design that the US Army developed for Camp Century would become later on kind of a standard design for research stations in extreme polar climate and weather conditions. For example, when West Germany decided to build a permanent research station in Antarctica, the design chosen for the station was in its main ideas very comparable to Camp Century’s design. The station that was named Georg-von-Neumayer Station was built during the Antarctic season 1980–81 and opened on 24 February 1981. The actual research station consisted of living quarters and laboratories

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in containers that were completely prefabricated and equipped in Germany before being shipped to Antarctica. Once they arrived at the chosen location on the Antarctic continent, they were placed into large steel pipes that worked basically in the same way as the trenches of Camp Century.52 The only major differences between Camp Century and the Neumayer Station were that the first one used trenches in the Greenlandic ice cap as the place to build up the prefabricated buildings of the actual research station, while the latter one consisted of prefabricated buildings (containers) that were placed inside large steel pipes to be buried under snow and ice after a short period of time. As with Camp Century, the design proved not only comparably cheap and easy to build, but also vulnerable to movements of the ice and snow in which it was located. The Neumayer Station was abandoned in 1993 after the Neumayer II Station was completed in 1992. The old station had reached its expected life span, and ice movements and the sinking of the station into the ice had reached a level that did not allow for further use of the station. Neumayer II again followed the basic design principles of Camp Century and was consequently subject to the same problems as Camp Century and the original Neumayer Station. When the Neumayer III Station replaced Neumayer II in 2009, finally an above-surface design was chosen and the whole concept of subsurface stations abandoned. The US Army’s Camp Century station was the largest research station in a line that began with Eismitte and continued to be one of the main designs for research stations until the end of use of the Antarctic research station Neumayer II. While the design was definitely a success, it had one major weakness: subsurface stations like Eismitte, Camp Century, and Neumayer could not permanently withstand the movement of the snow and ice in which they were embedded. While this might have been no major obstacle for a civilian research station that could simply be replaced after a decade or so, it was a definite no-go for a military installation of the dimensions of the proposed Project Iceworm. In the end, the best summary of the whole Camp Century / Project Iceworm complex might still be the words of Walter H. Wager written in his 1962 book about Camp Century when he was describing the Greenlander’s ideas about the project: They know that man has made only a tiny scratch in the huge frozen surface of Greenland, that diligent and resourceful efforts of Danes have produced only a few tiny specks of contemporary civilization on this immense and inhospitable island. They know that the sea and the sky and the wind still rule Greenland as they did before Eric the Red first landed nearly ten centuries ago. They know that the icecap will not change. Those who have heard of Camp Century are interested, but not overly impressed.53

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Ingo Heidbrink is professor of maritime history at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and an honorary research fellow at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. His research focuses on maritime environmental history and the history of the polar regions, in particular the economic history of the polar oceans and Antarctica. His authored works include Deutschlands einzige Kolonie ist das Meer—Die deutsche Hochseefischerei und die Fischereikonflikte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Convent, 2004) and several other books. He is secretary general of the International Maritime History Association, expert member of the International Polar Heritage Committee, and co-president of the North Atlantic Fisheries History Association.

Notes 1. Robert E. Peary, Northward over the “Great Ice”: A Narrative of Life and Work Along the Shores and Upon the Interior Ice-Cap of Northern Greenland in the Years 1886 and 1891–1897: With a Description of the Little Tribe of Smith-Sound Eskimos, the Most Northerly Human Beings in the World, and an Account of the Discovery and Bringing Home of the “Saviksue,” or Great Cape-York Meteorites (London: Methuen, 1898). 2. Josephine D. Peary and Robert E. Peary, My Arctic Journal: A Year among Ice-Fields and Eskimos (New York: Contemporary Pub. Co., 1893). 3. Erik Nørr and Thomassen Jesper, Nordatlanten Og Troperne: Forvaltningshistoriske Kilder Fra Faeroerne, Groenland, Island Og Tropekolonierne (Copehagen: Selskabet for Udgivelse af Kilder til Dansk Historie, 2007), 305. 4. Robert DeC. Ward, “A Cruise with the International Ice Patrol,” Geographical Review 14, no. 1 (1924): 51. 5. Ibid. 6. For the complete text of the agreement, see “Denmark-United States: Agreement Relating to the Defense of Greenland,” American Journal of International Law 35, no. 3 (July 1941). 7. Thaddeus D. Novak and P. J. Capelotti, Life and Death on the Greenland Patrol, 1942 (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005). 8. The air base Bluie West One became the Greenlandic airport Nasarsuaq, while the airbase Bluie West Eight became the Greenlandic airport Kangelussuaq. 9. William H. Hobbs, “The Defense of Greenland,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 31, no. 2 (June 1941). 10. Samuel Milner, “Establishing the Bolero Ferry Route,” Military Affairs 11, no. 4 (Winter 1947): 214. 11. Ibid., 215. 12. William D. Kingery, “Ice Alloys,” Science 134, no. 3473 (July 1961). 13. L. Dyan Cross, Code Name Habbakuk: A Secret Ship Made of Ice (Victoria, BC: Heritage House, 2012). 14. “Two US Atomic Subs Sail under North Pole,” Science News-Letter 74, no. 8 (1958). 15. Nikolaj Petersen, The Iceman That Didn’t Come: ‘Project Iceworm’ and the Search for a Nato Deterrent, 1960–1962 (Aarhus: Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, 2005).

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16. See Janet Martin-Nielsen’s contribution to this volume. 17. Jørgen Taagholt, Jens C. Hansen, and Daniel Lufkin, Greenland: Security Perspectives (Fairbanks, AK: Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, 2001), 29. 18. Elmer F. Clark, Technical Report 174: Camp Century Evolution of Concept and History of Design Construction and Performance (Hanover, NH: US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1965), 2. 19. Ibid., 23. 20. Ibid. 21. Walter H. Wager, Camp Century: City under the Ice (Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1962); Charles M. Daugherty, City under the Ice: The Story of Camp Century (New York: Macmillan, 1963). 22. “Television Highlights,” Washington Post, Times Herald, 3 September 1962. 23. “Scout to Go to Arctic,” New York Times, 26 June 1960. 24. “Greenland Base to get Atomic Power Plant,” New York Times, 23 March 1960. 25. Clark, Technical Report 174, 47. 26. Erik D. Weiss, “Cold War under the Ice: The Army’s Bid for a Long-Range Nuclear Role, 1959–1963,” Journal of Cold War Studies 3, no. 3 (Fall 2001). 27. Petersen, The Iceman That Didn’t Come; Nikolaj. Petersen, “The Iceman That Never Came: ‘Project Iceworm,’ the Search for a NATO Deterrent, and Denmark, 1960– 1962,” Scandinavian Journal of History 33, no. 1 (2008). 28. Weiss, “Cold War under the Ice,” 41. 29. Ibid., 43. 30. Kingery, “Ice Alloys.” 31. Weiss, “Cold War under the Ice,” 42. 32. Taagholt, Hansen, and Lufkin, Greenland: Security Perspectives, 29. 33. Petersen, The Iceman That Didn’t Come. 34. See Sophie Elixhauser’s contribution to this volume. 35. Wager, Camp Century, 100. 36. “Atomic Plant Tested,” New York Times, 19 October 1960. 37. Robert D. Leighty, Pictorial Performance Study of Camp Century, 1960–1962 (Hanover, NH: US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1963). 38. See Janet Martin-Nielsen’s contribution to this volume. 39. Willi Dansgaard, Frozen Annals: Greenland Ice Cap Research (Odder: Narayana Press, 2004), 124. 40. Ibid. 41. Ernst Sorge, “The Scientific Results of the Wegener Expeditions to Greenland,” Geographical Journal 81, no. 4 (April 1933): 334. 42. Wager, Camp Century, 101–7. 43. Sorge, “Scientific Results of the Wegener Expeditions,” 334. 44. Frank J. Leskovitz, “Camp Century, Greenland,” Science Leads the Way, retrieved 23 May 2011 from http://gombessa.tripod.com/scienceleadstheway/id9.html. 45. Ibid. 46. Austin Kovacs, Camp Century Revisited: A Pictorial View—June 1969 (Hanover, NH: US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1970). 47. Leskovitz, “Camp Century, Greenland.”

“Camp Century” and “Project Iceworm” 107

48. See Sophie Elixhauser’s contribution to this volume. 49. For Thule airbase, see Per Walsøe, Goodbye Thule: The Compulsory Relocation in 1953 (Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter, 2003). 50. “Denmark-United States: Agreement Relating to the Defense of Greenland.” 51. H. C. Hansen to Val Peterson, 16 November 1957, quoted in Taagholt, Hansen, and Lufkin, Greenland: Security Perspectives, 38. 52. Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar und Meeresforschung, 125 Jahre Deutsche Polarforschung (Bremerhaven: Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, 1994), 159. 53. Wager, Camp Century, 30. Unfortunately today it needs to be stated that Wager’s comment might no longer be really true: military activities during the Cold War period have not changed the Greenlandic ice cap. Nevertheless scientific research clearly shows that the ice cap has changed—due not to military activities but to climate change.

Bibliography Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar und Meeresforschung. 125 Jahre Deutsche Polarforschung. Bremerhaven: Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, 1994. “Atomic Plant Tested.” New York Times, 19 October 1960. Clark, Elmer F. Technical Report 174: Camp Century Evolution of Concept and History of Design Construction and Performance. Hanover, NH: US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1965. Retrieved 23 May 2011 from http://www.dtic.mil/ dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/477706.pdf. Cross, L. Dyan. Code Name Habbakuk: A Secret Ship Made of Ice. Victoria, BC: Heritage House, 2012. Dansgaard, Willi. Frozen Annals: Greenland Ice Cap Research. Odder: Narayana Press, 2004. Daugherty, Charles M. City under the Ice: The Story of Camp Century. New York: Macmillan, 1963. “Denmark-United States: Agreement Relating to the Defense of Greenland.” American Journal of International Law 35, no. 3 (July 1941): 129–34. “Greenland Base to get Atomic Power Plant.” New York Times, 23 March 1960. Hansen, H. C., to Val Peterson, 16 November 1957. In Greenland: Security Perspectives, by Jørgen Taagholt, Jens C. Hansen, and Daniel Lufkin. Fairbanks, AK: Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, 2001. Hobbs, William H. “The Defense of Greenland.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 31, no. 2 (June 1941): 95–104. Kingery, William D. “Ice Alloys.” Science 134, no. 3473 (July 1961): 164–68. Kovacs, Austin. Camp Century Revisited: A Pictorial View—June 1969. Hanover, NH: US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1970. Leighty, Robert D. Pictorial Performance Study of Camp Century, 1960–1962. Hanover, NH: US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1963. Leskovitz, Frank J. “Camp Century, Greenland.” Retrieved 23 May 2011 from http:// gombessa.tripod.com/scienceleadstheway/id9.html. Milner, Samuel. “Establishing the Bolero Ferry Route.” Military Affairs 11, no. 4 (Winter 1947): 213–22.

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Nørr, Erik, and Jesper Thomassen. Nordatlanten Og Troperne: Forvaltningshistoriske Kilder Fra Faeroerne, Groenland, Island Og Tropekolonierne. Copenhagen: Selskabet for Udgivelse af Kilder til Dansk Historie, 2007. Novak, Thaddeus D., and P. J. Capelotti. Life and Death on the Greenland Patrol, 1942. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005. Peary, Josephine D., and Robert E. Peary. My Arctic Journal: A Year among Ice-Fields and Eskimos. New York: Contemporary Pub. Co., 1893. Peary, Robert E. Northward over the “Great Ice”: A Narrative of Life and Work Along the Shores and Upon the Interior Ice-Cap of Northern Greenland in the Years 1886 and 1891–1897: With a Description of the Little Tribe of Smith-Sound Eskimos, the Most Northerly Human Beings in the World, and an Account of the Discovery and Bringing Home of the “Saviksue,” or Great Cape-York Meteorites. London: Methuen, 1898. Petersen, Nikolaj. “The Iceman That Never Came: ‘Project Iceworm,’ the Search for a NATO Deterrent, and Denmark 1960–1962.” Scandinavian Journal of History 33, no. 1 (2008): 75–98. ———. The Iceman That Didn’t Come: “Project Iceworm” and the Search for a Nato Deterrent, 1960–1962. Aarhus: Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, 2005. “Scout to Go to Arctic.” New York Times, 26 June 1960. Sorge, Ernst. “The Scientific Results of the Wegener Expeditions to Greenland.” Geographical Journal 81, no. 4 (April 1933): 333–44. Taagholt, Jørgen, Jens C. Hansen, and Daniel Lufkin. Greenland: Security Perspectives. Fairbanks, AK: Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, 2001. “Television Highlights.” Washington Post, Times Herald, 3 September 1962. “Two US Atomic Subs Sail under North Pole” Science News-Letter 74, no. 8. (1958): 115. Wager, Walter H. Camp Century: City under the Ice. Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1962. Walsøe, Per. Goodbye Thule: The Compulsory Relocation in 1953. Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter, 2003. Ward, Robert DeC. “A Cruise with the International Ice Patrol.” Geographical Review 14, no. 1 (1924): 50–61. Weiss, Erik D. “Cold War under the Ice: The Army’s Bid for a Long-Range Nuclear Role, 1959–1963.” Journal of Cold War Studies 3, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 31–58.

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CHAPTER 4

Inuit Responses to Arctic Militarization Examples from East Greenland Sophie Elixhauser

Introduction Considering uses and knowledge of ice and snow during the Cold War, it is particularly striking that the local people inhabiting the circumpolar regions of this world have hardly played any role in terms of their vast experience on how to deal with cold environments. The Inuit, for instance, have made a living in the Arctic for several thousand years following a way of life based on in-depth knowledge of and experience with ice, snow, and the ever-changing Arctic environment. Anthropologists having studied Inuit groups across the circumpolar north have highlighted Inuit uses of sea ice,1 construction practices of traditional Inuit houses,2 fur clothing,3 skills in orientation and navigating frozen or partly frozen waters,4 knowledge and perceptions of glaciers,5 and local observations of environmental changes and climate change,6 to name just some examples. Western societies entering Greenland and other countries across the circumpolar north, however, transplanted their own ideas, technologies, and systems of knowledge to the Arctic, not taking into account locally available knowledge. This approach, as history shows, once and again ran up against its limits. This started as early as with Eric the Red’s first colony in Greenland, founded in the year 986. The farming lifestyle the first settlers brought to Greenland could not adapt to the cooling down of climate and environmental changes during the Little Ice Age, which eventually led to their extinction. Contact between the Norse settlers and the Greenlandic Inuit was very limited, and the settlers did not take over any of the Inuit practices to make a living in this challenging and ever-changing environment. Though there are various different theories about the disappearance of the Norse Greenlandic settlements, it seems probable that this was—at least in part—connected to the settlers’ missing ability to adapt to changing conditions.7 Dale MacKenzie Brown writes, “In their reluctance to see themselves as anything but Europe-

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ans, the Greenlanders [i.e. the European settlers in Greenland] failed to adopt the kind of apparel that the Inuit employed as protection against the cold and damp or to borrow any of the Eskimo hunting gear.”8 But let us turn to the more recent history. In World War II and during the Cold War, the Arctic experienced a rapid increase in military interest. Whereas during World War II the United States and the Soviet Union were allies in their fight against Nazi Germany, the closing of the Iron Curtain put the two powers in opposing camps. Throughout this era, a great number of military bases were built, and Greenland’s location gained strategic importance for the U.S. government.9 Arctic environments were perceived as vast, empty strategic space. Indigenous people were not granted any say in this matter, and no thought was given to the potential usefulness of local knowledge and experience. At the same time, indigenous people were the ones affected most by the immediate and long-term impacts of the military facilities in their homelands.10 Similar to the story of the Norse settlers, the Western players’ missing experience with these environments characterized by ice and snow led to manifold problems in the Cold War era and beyond. Illusionary projects built on or under the ice cap11 and military stations such as the Distant Early Warning Line stations located directly on the Greenlandic ice cap ultimately showed limited operability (see below). In the following, I will take up the perspective of an Inuit group inhabiting the Greenlandic east coast and examine the role they played with regard to two former military sites in their homelands, the exchanges between Inuit and staff at these sites, and the short- and long-term impacts of these activities for the Inuit community. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Tasiilaq region in East Greenland conducted on a regular basis since 2005. My longest stay in the region lasted for one year from summer 2006 to summer 2007, supplemented by a three-month stay in 2005 as well as several shorter stays since then.12 In spring 2007, together with some Greenlandic friends I visited a village where I hardly knew anybody. The first day of our visit, I heard two villagers discussing whether I could be a spy—an idea that was easily corrected by my Greenlandic companions. At first, I was quite surprised and wondered how such an idea would spread in this remote environment, before I came to think of the military activities in this region during the last century. As my fieldwork went along, my attention was drawn to two former military sites and East Greenlanders’ experiences with them—both are barely mentioned in the anthropological literature.13 In the Ikateq14 Fjord between the villages of Kuummiut and Sermiligaaq, there is a deserted air base from World War II (formerly called Bluie East Two). The base is bordered by ragged mountains and nowadays comprises a dusty long runaway and thousands of old oil barrels. A little farther to the south, on the top of a hill next to the village Kulusuk, there was

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a radar station operating during the Cold War. The radar station called DEY-4 was part of the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations stretching across the northern Arctic region to detect Soviet missiles. Today, only the foundations of this station are still visible. These two sites were the ones with the greatest tangible effects on the Inuit population in this region. In this chapter, I have pursued my initial interest in local people’s perceptions of these military sites and their social-cultural and environmental impacts, by combining information I obtained during my fieldwork and a few telephone interviews with the analysis of the available documents. My main argument is that while discussions of militarization and indigenous peoples have often emphasized the negative consequences for local communities, it is important to adopt a broader perspective. My examples will show that militarization has affected the Inuit population on various different levels; some of these effects implied long-lasting consequences, whereas others were only temporary. Not all of these impacts have been regarded as negative by the East Greenlanders, yet they should also not be downplayed, as sometimes happened by the military. My elaborations, moreover, will show exchanges and contacts between the two groups—Inuit and military staff—and on a more general level, a one-sided flow of knowledge in most cases. This chapter will start with some background of the role of indigenous people in Arctic militarization. After introducing the Tasiilaq region in East Greenland and the changes it underwent since the end of the nineteenth century, I will take a closer look at the air base Bluie East Two and the DEW Line radar station DYE-4.

Indigenous People and Arctic Militarization The environmental and social impacts of Arctic militarization affected and affect indigenous populations across the circumpolar north. Among the most drastic consequences are cases of forced relocation of indigenous people, such as the 1953 High Arctic relocation in Canada,15 or the resettlement of the Inuit at Thule (Uummannaq) to make way for the U.S. military base.16 Some militarization projects led to devastating environmental consequences, with nuclear testing and the dumping of radioactive waste featuring at the top end. In most cases, it implied consequences for local economies, health, human rights, peace and security, and social problems related to prostitution and alcohol abuse.17 Activist Mary Simon asserts: As a general rule, in the face of military-related developments the wellbeing and security of indigenous societies cannot be taken for granted. Militarization tends to undermine the self-determination of indigenous people. In many instances, it imposes costly and undesired policies, priorities, and

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activities within the boundaries of their territories, usually leading to a significant loss of control by native peoples over their lands and waters.18

Arctic militarization brought about different degrees of resistance, ranging from more or less silent criticism to political activism and claims for compensation payments.19 At the same time militarization projects acted as drivers for broader societal and cultural changes and as “beachheads of modernization,” in terms of infrastructure, the introduction of consumer goods, and changes in values due to the influx of military staff.20 Nevertheless, a number of anthropologists have found that native people living adjacent to military sites speak about these projects in a positive way. Economic opportunities, the introduction of consumer goods, and the experiences with individuals who worked for the military have been valued. Melanie Gagnon reports that in Iqaluit the Americans are remembered as fun people who helped the locals a lot.21 Likewise, Stacey Fritz found that “many Arctic residents, especially elders, do not have anything negative to say about the military.”22 Gagnon therefore criticizes an exclusive negative view on Arctic militarization projects as forming part of a protectionist position of “keeping the natives native.”23 Arctic militarization projects have thus been regarded in ambivalent ways. We have to differentiate, however, between people’s problems with the military as an institution and experiences with individual people who came to work at their facilities.24 Moreover, the economic opportunities for local people formed part of a common rhetoric employed by the military itself (which was often readily adopted by local people) trying to avert any kind of criticism: economic opportunities were framed as “gift-like ultimately showing limited operability” and the presence of the military as “natural.”25 As Fritz pointed out, one has to keep in mind that the military’s general objective is to transform a civilian-oriented society in a military-oriented society.26 Before I turn to discuss the impacts of and responses to the two largest military facilities on the east coast of Greenland, I will now give some brief background to the region.

The Tasiilaq Region in East Greenland The Greenlandic east coast holds around 3,300 inhabitants; approximately 2,900 people live in the Tasiilaq region and 400 in Ittoqqortoormiit. This is a low population density compared to West Greenland and in relation to Greenland’s overall population of about 57,000 people. Like the whole Greenlandic east coast, the Tasiilaq region is distinctive for its cold sea current running down from north to south, which brings along

Inuit Responses to Arctic Militarization 113

Map 4.1. The Tasiilaq Region, East Greenland. Town Village Airport 0 0

25

50 25

75

100 km

50 miles Tiniteqilaaq Sermiligaaq

Land

Kuummiut

Tasiilaq Isortoq

Kulusuk

Sea Map: Martl Jung.

huge amounts of ice (so-called pack ice) from North Greenland and the North Pole region. This makes navigation for long periods of the year extremely hazardous and often impossible. Due to its isolation because of the pack ice, the population of the east coast did not have sustained contact with southerners for a long time. Contrary to West Greenland, where colonization began in the early eighteenth century, colonization in East Greenland started as recently as 1894. Sustained contacts between East Greenlandic Inuit and non-Greenlandic people started with Danish naval officer Gustav Holm’s arrival in the area in 1884. Holm’s expedition found a seminomadic Inuit population, scattered along the fjords of the area, which numbered 413 individuals at that time.27 Ten years later, Holm returned to the Tasiilaq area to set up a trading station and missionary post. He was accompanied by Johan Petersen, who was responsible for administration and trade, and the missionary Frederic C. P. Rüttel. The administration of political, social, and economic issues was now carried out directly from Copenhagen, with local affairs being managed by the colonial administration in Tasiilaq (formerly called Ammassalik). By 1921, the whole population was baptized Lutheran. Settlements became more permanent, and the colony experienced an increase in population numbers.28 The rapid economic and social-cultural developments that have characterized recent East Greenlandic history did not commence until World War II. Before then, major cultural changes had been avoided; the population had been largely shielded from much contact with the outside world, and the colonial administration had supported a local seal hunting economy. The Danish

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authorities had wanted to protect the small ethnic group, partly from diseases for which they lacked immunity, and partly from the risks related to abandoning their “traditional” lifestyle. With World War II (called suqsunniqsuaq, the “big world war,” in East Greenlandic), Denmark’s protection policy and isolationism could no longer be sustained. After Germany occupied Denmark, the United States took over responsibility for Greenland for five years. The United States guaranteed the security of Greenland and in turn was allowed to construct military bases and facilities on the island.29 In East Greenland, the U.S. government set up a radio-meteorological station in Tasiilaq in 1941, and in 1942 they built the military air base Bluie East Two in Ikateq. Anthropologist Joëlle Robert-Lamblin recounts: At the time Tasiilaq was still a small settlement where about 110–130 Greenlanders lived. Some of them still remember the impressions made on them by the arrival of the first planes in their area: “We were terrified,” they say. Later, when the base and the landing strip had become operational and a small meteorological station (which remained secret) had been set up on the island of Kulusuk in the summer of 1943, the American forces discontinued their activities in Tasiilaq.30

The flux of American soldiers and workmen brought about cultural changes of various sorts, including the introduction and use of consumer goods. Yet by 1950, as Robert Petersen asserts, though “shamans and other distinguished individuals had disappeared, . . . the society, cemented not by leaders but by the reciprocity of free hunters, was still functioning.”31 Major cultural and economic changes in the Tasiilaq region took place between the 1950s and early 1960s.32 The population was regrouped into larger villages, and the turf and stone houses that the East Greenlanders had lived in before were gradually replaced by wooden houses.33 The isolation of the Tasiilaq area ended when the DEW Line radar station and its airport were built in Kulusuk in 1957, and construction work brought in a considerable number of Americans and Danes for several years. The modernization of the small capital of Tasiilaq began at around the same time, connected to an influx of Danish residents. Some East Greenlanders took up wage-earning positions, in the fishing industry (with commercial cod fishing in Kuummiut established in the late 1950s) or for the local administration.34 “Westernization” efforts continued throughout the 1960s, linked to educational policies that aimed to integrate Greenlandic youth into Danish society.35 In 1963 a municipality system like that in West Greenland was established in East Greenland, and throughout the 1970s increasing autonomy was granted to various political bodies. This went along with diverse efforts to achieve greater independence from Denmark. Home rule (hjemmestyre) was celebrated in 1979, with Greenland taking over its own

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administrative affairs. Self-rule (selvstyre) was granted in 2009. Hence, in East Greenland the transformation from a hunting society to a society supported also by wage labor took place within only a few decades, and at a much greater speed than developments in West Greenland, where colonization had started as early as the 1720s.

Air Base Bluie East Two The air base Bluie East Two was constructed alongside the Ikateq Fjord some twenty kilometers away from the next settlement (for views of the deserted base, see figures 4.1 and 4.2). This remote location was connected to efforts by the United States to give the “fullest consideration consistent with military necessity . . . to the welfare, health and economic needs of the native populations.”36 Most Greenland military bases, which brought thousands of servicemen to the island, were thus located away from the Inuit settlements. Yet the (supposedly) unpopulated area of Bluie East Two in Ikateq, for instance, included customary hunting and fishing grounds and a campsite of the Inuit of the nearby villages, which had not been taken into account in the planning of the base. As a general rule, contacts between the Inuit and the Americans were restricted in order not to disturb local culture.37 But as I will show in what Figure 4.1. Remnants of air base Bluie East Two, July 2007.

Photo: Martl Jung.

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follows, the idea that such restrictions could avert impacts on local culture and society was rather illusory. Between 1942 and 1945, Bluei East Two air base was used as a stopover to refuel airplanes on their way to the European front. Bluie East Two had a 2,000-meter-long landing strip, and in 1943 about eight hundred American soldiers were stationed there, with fewer numbers in the following years. The air base never attained the prominence in north Atlantic air traffic originally intended. In 1947 the soldiers left the area.38 As has been reported in some ethnographic sources, the arrival of the American ships and planes in this previously remote area and the presence of the American soldiers impacted upon the lifestyle and culture of the East Greenlandic population. Anthropologists Paul-Émile Victor and Joëlle RobertLamblin called the establishment of the air base a turning point in the history of East Greenland. Manifold consumer goods were introduced into the region, and Denmark’s former protection policy and its restrictions, such as on the import of Western goods, could no longer be maintained.39 Though Americans were not allowed to visit the villages, the base attracted many East Greenlanders, who put up their tents near the site. This created various problems, and in 1945 the base and its surroundings were therefore closed to Greenlanders—a rule that was not always strictly enforced.40 Robert-Lamblin describes the problems: The lifestyle of the people of Sermiligaaq and Kuummiit has been most disturbed by the American presence during the Second World War; so much that, instead of spreading out during the summer to gather food reserves, they would come and pitch their tents near the American camp. This camp, however, had been set up on the precise neighbourhood of a lake and a stream full of arctic char to which the inhabitants of Sermiligaaq used to come during the spring. In May 1945 a Dane, Poul Hennings, was asked to prevent the Greenlanders from approaching the base. He threatened to confiscate their sleds and the women’s kammit (boots) if they trespassed. This way he re-established the former pattern of life in the small surrounding villages, and was thanked by the old Malvina Maratse for having “brought the hunters back to Sermiligaaq.”41

Anthropologist Cunera Buijs noted changes in material culture during this period of time, related to a reduced availability of furs from bearded and hooded seals.42 She assumes that this might be connected to less hunting as some Inuit had found work at the base and were able to obtain clothing, food, and materials there.43 It is reported that the Inuit were quite keen on the American food available at the base, and many East Greenlanders came to the base to collect leftover foods and all sorts of things from the rubbish dumps, which led to some problems. Robert-Lamblin recounts that “spoiled meat obtained

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Figure 4.2. Oil barrels at the deserted air base Bluie East Two, July 2017.

Photo: Martl Jung.

this way caused the death of three East Greenlanders. After this serious accident the regulation forbidding the Ammassalimiut44 to come near the base was more strictly enforced.”45 During my time in East Greenland, I have not heard any negative talk about the air base and the Americans who worked there, and some East Greenlanders spoke about parties and dancing at the base. Hence, similar to many bases around the world, Bluie East Two attracted Greenlandic women. Some children with American fathers were born during these years, yet these were few considering the number of Americans who stayed at the base.46 After the Americans left, all facilities and materials (and waste) were left behind. I have heard of some ideas at the time to build a hotel and a modern city at this location using the leftover infrastructure—plans that the Greenlanders declined.47 Step by step, some of the buildings were transferred and reused, such as the dark-colored, wooden building of the old discotheque Klubben in Tasiilaq. East Greenlanders were allowed to take materials, such as iron or wooden planks, which they used for their houses.48 Today, some East Greenlanders still possess material reminders of the American base, such as old Coca-Cola bottles or pieces of clothing. My friend Pavia Nathanielsen from Sermiligaaq, for example, showed me a military jacket his father had received at the air base (see figure 4.3). Some elderly persons still know a few words of American English from that time.

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Figure 4.3. Nathanielsen’s grandson trying on a military jacket from Bluie East Two, January 2007.

Photo: Sophie Elixhauser.

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The missing cleanup of the area has led to severe environmental pollution in the area. Until a few years ago, one could still see large equipment left behind, such as cranes, cars, and parts of buildings (see figure 4.1)—today only smaller items, including the many oil barrels, can be found there. The oil barrels at the deserted base have been numbered two hundred thousand, possibly up to three hundred thousand (see figure 4.2).49 After the Americans had left, their contents were drawn off to the surroundings land and waters, deeply affecting the environment and the hunting and fishing. The hunter Ulrik Manîkutdlak from Kuummiiut recalled this environmental disaster: Colonial administrator Mr. Jensen had received an order from Denmark to put holes into the oil barrels and to let the contents leak out into the environment. Before that Ikkatteq was a fertile place. . . . The area was a very rich hunting ground, and the seals were almost wiped out. We were very angry about this. The whole contents of the barrels were discharged into the environment. It stank and the plants wilted. The water was of a very dark sort and the thick oil turned it to be light and shiny.50

Nowadays, you can again meet East Greenlanders hunting and fishing in this area (see figure 4.4), yet the place of the base remains desolate and unferFigure 4.4. Fishing at the creek next to the air base Bluie East Two, September 2006.

Photo: Sophie Elixhauser.

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tile.51 During the last decades, the environmental pollution at Ikateq and some other Greenlandic sites and the responsibilities of Denmark and the Pentagon have been a recurrent political issue. Once again vague plans for cleaning the area have appeared, but up to now nothing has happened.52

Radar Station DYE-4 The first years after the war, activities at the Greenland bases were limited. In 1951 the defense of Greenland was returned to Denmark, yet the United States was to assist Denmark in case of a necessary defense. The important Greenland air bases were to be kept, some smaller ones closed (such as Bluie East Two), and some new facilities were planned.53 Accordingly, the former weather station in Thule was expanded to become the U.S. Defense Area with a Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, and the Inuit of Thule (Uummannaq) were forcibly relocated to settle in Qaanaaq, an area 150 kilometers further north.54 Between 1953 and 1958, the United States built the Distant Early Warning Line, also known as the DEW Line, a system of fifty-eight radar stations set up to detect incoming Soviet nuclear missiles. Stretching across the far northern Arctic region of Alaska and Canada, including stations in the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland, the DEW Line was one of the most expensive military installations during peacetimes.55 The DEW Line included four stations Figure 4.5. Old signposts near the airport, July 2017.

Photo: Martl Jung.

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in Greenland: DYE-1 near Qaqqatoqaq on the west coast, DYE-2 and DYE-3 located directly on the ice cap,56 and DYE-4 near the village of Kulusuk in East Greenland.57 The Greenland stations were managed conjointly with the Danish authorities.58 Initial plans to use the area of the former base Bluie East Two in Ikateq for the East Greenlandic DEW Line station were soon rejected in favor of a coastal location up a hill near the village of Kulusuk.59 This location near Kulusuk led to much discussion between Denmark and America. The Danish authorities were afraid of the possible consequences for the small hunting community that had hitherto only little contact with Europeans. Suggestions for a Greenlandic power of veto over the project were rejected from the American side, who argued that “the fate of many people more than the population of Greenland was involved.”60 The location of Kulusuk was kept, yet contact between the local Greenlanders and the American (and Danish) staff was to be severely restricted. In 1958 a meeting with local hunters from Kulusuk was arranged to inform them about the plans. The villagers feared a possible decline in hunting and criticized the strict segregation policy between the workmen and the Greenlandic population. This meeting did not lead to any changes in this policy.61 Radar station DYE-4 was built on the top of a hill next to a weather station that the Americans had secretly kept during World War II (see figure 4.6). Figure 4.6. Deserted location of DYE-4 next to the weather station, July 2017.

Photo: Martl Jung.

122 Sophie Elixhauser

The main building of DYE-4 had six floors, and on top of it there was a large white radome. It was surrounded by tropospheric scatter radio antennae, directed toward Keflevik, Iceland, and DYE-3 on the ice cap. The station was in operation until 1991. Along with DYE-4, a military airport was built that also started to offer civilian flights upon completion (see figure 4.7). For the construction, a big ship brought materials from the United States, and the landing strip of Ikateq air base was reactivated for a number of years. These years brought a flux of Danish and American workmen to Kulusuk, numbering up to four hundred workers in 1957.62 Though there were severe restrictions on the right to enter the radar station, “one thing is the rule and in real life it is something else,” as Arvid Thastum said, a former chef of DYE-4 and Kulusuk Airport.63 East Greenlanders (secretly) visited the radar station, and Americans visited the village. On his website on the DEW Line, the former DYE-4 staff Frank Teeter shows the picture of a “restricted area” sign near the entrance building of DYE-4. He recounts that the sign failed to deter frequent visits by all sorts of folks. Native men walked nearly 8 miles from the beachfront village at Kap Dan64 to sell exquisitely carved ivory figurines called “tupilaks” . . . worked in to the shapes of native deities. Figure 4.7. Kulusuk Airport, July 2017.

Photo: Martl Jung.

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I own about 12 of these. Native women would visit for other purposes. Some enjoyed extended stays. I recall entering the bathroom during a break in my graveyard shift to find three native women showering. They weren’t embarrassed at all, but I was and left.65

The female visitors to the base—called “night workers” by Robert Gessain66—remained an open secret. Various children resulted from these meetings, and a small number of marriages. Robert-Lamblin reports that the influx of workmen for the construction of DYE-4 “coincided with a shift in the moral attitudes among the young Ammassalimmiut. They allowed themselves total sexual freedom before marriage despite the disapproval of the older generation. This considerably increased the proportion of illegitimate births, among which there were several hybrids.”67 Today one still finds a certain number of Greenlanders throughout the Tasiilaq region with American fathers or grandfathers, who are often admired for their lighter skin by other Greenlanders.68 Anna Kuitse Thastum (see figure 4.8), a famous East Greenlandic drum dancer from Kulusuk, who passed away in 2012, was married to two men, both of whom she had met at DYE-4. The first was an American, with whom she had lived in the United States for some years, and the second was the aforementioned Dane Arvid Thastum. When I met Anna in Kulusuk in 2008, she spoke about the radar station in a positive way, stressing that she missed the station and the Americans a lot. In the documentary Echoes, she recounted, “I have lots of memories from DYE-4. Happy days, sad days, nasty days. Crazy. At that time I was 17, 18, 20, 22. It was a crazy life. I always went out dancing. Sometimes I had three guys dancing with me to the music. I danced, screamed, jumped, I loved it. Lots of sadness.”69 The presence of the Americans and Danes at DYE-4 greatly influenced the development of the souvenir industry in Kulusuk. The villagers were known as gifted sculptors, and with the incoming workers a market for their products developed. They started to sell wooden masks and tupileq70 figures—small carved bone figurines in the shape of legendary beings.71 These handicrafts were produced for sale to tourists and workers living on the island and a limited number for export via Greenland Trade (Kalaallit Niuerfiat).72 The souvenir industry in Kulusuk did not succeed in reaching the international (“Eskimo art”) market, and for most villagers it remained a complementary activity to hunting, fishing, or wage labor. In her book from the mid-1980s, RobertLamblin stresses the poverty and unemployment among some villagers, which to some extent is also visible today.73 Through the airport built along with the radar station—until today the only airport in the region—Kulusuk became the “entrance door” to East Greenland for all visitors arriving from West Greenland, Iceland, or Denmark. The

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Figure 4.8. Drum dance performance by Anna Kuitse Thastum, Kulusuk, September 2008.

Photo: Sophie Elixhauser.

consequences of tourism have thus affected the village of Kulusuk in a more drastic way than the other settlements in the region, which are connected to the airport via helicopter flights. In the 1960s, one-day tourism from Iceland started in the summer months and is still carried out today. These tourists discover “life in a Greenlandic village” in two hours, by visiting the church, an earth house reconstruction, and the souvenir shop and by watching a kayak and a drum dance performance.74 Apart from disturbances through the tourist groups walking through the village, the presence of the foreigners has also led to some revitalization processes. Anna Kuitse Thastum, who was one of the most famous drum dancers in East Greenland, recounted that at a certain time the drum dance tradition was about to die, with the only drum dancer

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left having been her brother Anda. Encouraged by American and Greenlandic people, she was persuaded to start drum dancing again. She became very successful, and after a while she started teaching the children.75 Today, there are again several drum dancers in Kulusuk and the whole region. In the mid-1980s, the DEW Line began its upgrading and transition to become the North Warning System (NWS) of today, and some of the DEW Line stations were abandoned. These are now the focus of massive cleanup efforts by the Canadian government.76 The Greenlandic DEW stations were not included in this transition, and they were inactivated by the end of the 1980s. Their closure was triggered by technical and structural problems at ice cap station DYE-2.77 DYE-1 and the ice cap stations DYE-2 and DYE-3 were inactivated in 1988, and the last American left DYE-4 in 1991.78 The buildings of DYE-4 Kulusuk were torn down, and apart from the concrete everything was taken away.79 The Greenlandic DEW ice cap stations, however, were left behind on the ice cap. Discussions with the U.S. government on their cleanup are ongoing.80

Conclusion My examples from East Greenland have illustrated the unforeseeable consequences that militarization during World War II and the Cold War had for local communities, for social life, culture, and the environment. Attempts to shield inhabitants from the military projects in their homelands were rather illusory, as was shown by the American (and Danish) segregation policy in Greenland that did not reach its goal. Some of these consequences were rather obvious, such as environmental pollution, changes in local economies, or the impacts of military infrastructure and technologies continuously used after the closure of such sites, whereas others were less obvious, such as changing ideas and mental images, as for example in perceptions of levels of security or gender relations. I have further shown that many of these impacts were closely entangled with the broader social and cultural changes in this particular region at the time. Some of the changes were indeed welcomed by local people, as for instance the introduction of consumer goods or the market for tourist souvenirs, whereas others were assessed negatively, such as environmental pollution or the disturbances by military airplanes. With regard to all of these developments, however, and comparable to many other Arctic sites, the indigenous population did not have any say in the decision-making. Though the Americans had attempted to consider the welfare of the Inuit living near the bases, as long as it was “consistent with military necessity,”81 their priorities were always military related. These priorities substantially influenced the long-term development of these local communities and their broader regions.

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For instance, most of the Greenlandic airports today were built for the U.S. bases, and their location at a distance from populated areas was due to their specific military purpose. For today’s civilian uses these locations no longer make sense, and plans are currently under discussion to build new airports closer to the towns, such as an airport in Tasiilaq that would eventually supersede former DYE-4 airport Kulusuk.82 Furthermore, the relations between male military staff and Greenlandic women consolidated a certain pattern of gender relations in Greenland and beyond. This pattern involves male outsiders, such as military staff, Danish workers, and explorers, being together with local women. At times having been called violent abuse or prostitution, at other times love relationships—and all of these are probably true— this pattern has led to new social (and economic) structures that still shape Greenlandic society today. It would be important to expand research on this theme, for a more detailed view of the perspectives of both women and men involved—the latter entailing the perspectives of the male non-native men as well as the Greenlandic men’s perspectives on “their” women’s relationships with the former.83 My examples from East Greenland, moreover, have underlined the issue mentioned at the very beginning of this chapter. In East Greenland, similar to other Arctic regions, the (official) segregation between local communities and the bases implied a strong one-way flow of knowledge. According to the available sources, the military relied on technologies and knowledge originating from non-Arctic regions and did not take into consideration the Inuit’s knowledge about the Arctic environment characterized by ice, snow, and severe weather conditions. Accordingly, various problems and accidents were reported, and the sources about DYE-4 and Bluie East Two, for example, tell us about lost ships and airplanes84 and the recurring destruction of parts of the installations—the most severe example being the tilting of the structure of ice cap station DYE-2, which ultimately lead to the demise of the Greenlandic DEW Line stations.85 Likewise, the technologies and knowledge introduced along with the military installations substantially influenced local knowledge and Greenlandic society as a whole, and for instance weather forecasts from the meteorological stations built during that time are now used by every Greenlandic hunter, in combination with local environmental knowledge. In light of Greenland’s increasing political autonomy and self-determination of today, a slight reversal of this one-sided flow of knowledge has been taking place in the most recent history, at least in some realms of society, and one example is the downgrading of the importance of the Danish language in favour of Greenlandic (kalaallisut). At the same time, one still finds numerous clashes between local knowledge and scientific (“Western”) knowledge—and discussions about their compatibility—both types of knowledge that provide the basis of a modern Greenlandic society. Let us hope that in the future Green-

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land will be able to advance the integration of these types of knowledge and, likewise, will be able to continue its way toward a greater self-determination, which is particularly relevant in light of today’s new booming international interest in Greenland’s mineral resources.

Sophie Elixhauser is an honorary research fellow at the Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, in the United Kingdom. Her research interests include human-environmental relations, perception and movement, interpersonal communication, personhood, climate change, and tourism/ travel. Her academic work is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in East Greenland; she further conducted field research in the Italian Alps and the Philippines. Publications include the books Negotiating Personal Autonomy. Communication and Personhood in East Greenland (2018) and Ethik in der angewandten Ethnologie (Ethics in applied anthropology) (2006).

Notes I am grateful to Janne Flora, Achim Müller, Claudia Regel, two anonymous reviewers and the editors of this volume for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. My special thanks go to the people in East Greenland for their continuous support and friendship throughout my fieldwork and beyond. I acknowledge funding obtained for my East Greenland project by the School of Social Sciences, University of Aberdeen. 1. See Claudio Aporta, “Shifting Perspectives on Shifting Ice: Documenting and Representing Inuit Use of the Sea Ice,” Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien 55, no. 1 (Spring 2011); Shari F. Gearheard, Lena K. Holm, and Henry Huntington, eds., The Meaning of Ice: People and Sea Ice in Three Arctic Communities (Montreal: International Polar Institute, 2013); Martina Tyrrell, “Enacting and Renewing Identity, Kinship and Humanity on the Sea Ice,” Polar Geography 36, no. 1–2 (2013). 2. P. Whitridge, “Landscape, Houses, Bodies, Things: ‘Place’ and the Archaeology of Inuit Imaginaries,” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 11, no. 2 (June 2004). 3. Cunera Buijs, Furs and Fabrics: Transformations, Clothing and Identity in East Greenland (Leiden: CNWS Publications, 2004). 4. Claudio Aporta, “Routes, Trails and Tracks: Trail Breaking among the Inuit of Igloolik [Les Routes, Sentiers et Traces chez les Inuit d’Igloolik],” Études Inuit Studies 28, no. 2 (2004); Sophie Elixhauser, “Moving Along: Wayfinding and Non-verbal Communication Across the Frozen Seascape of East Greenland,” in At Home on the Waves. Human Habitation of the Sea from the Mesolithic to Today, ed. T. J. King and G. Robinson (New York: Berghahn Books, in press); Sophie Elixhauser, “Unterwegs im Eismeer: Mobilität, persönliche Autonomie und sozialer Zusammenhalt im ländlichen Ostgrönland,” in Grönland. Kontinuitäten und Brüche im Leben der grönländischen Inuit, edited by F. Sowa (Leverkusen: Budrich UniPress, forthcoming). 5. Julie Cruikshank, Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imaginations (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2005); Sophie Elix-

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6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

hauser, “Travelling the East Greenlandic Sea- and Landscape: Encounters, Places, and Stories,” Mobilities 10, no. 4 (2015): 531–51. See Igor Krupnik and Dyanna Jolly, eds., The Earth Is Faster Now: Indigenous Observations of Arctic Environmental Change (Fairbanks, AK: Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, 2002); Elina Helander and Tero Mustonen, eds., Snowscapes, Dreamscapes: A Snowchange Community Book of Change (Vaasa: Tampere Polytechnic Publications, 2004). Dale M. Brown, “The Fate of Greenland’s Vikings,” Archaeology, 28 February 2000. Ibid. See Stetson Conn, Rose C. Engelman, and Byron Fairchild, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts (Washington, DC: Center of Military History United States Army, 2000); Franklyn Griffiths, ed., Arctic Alternatives: Civility or Militarism in the Circumpolar North (Toronto: Science for Peace, Samuel Stevens, 1993). P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Ryan Shackleton. “Inuit–Air Force Relations in the Qikiqtani Region During the Early Cold War,” in De-icing Required! The Historical Dimension of the Canadian Air Force’s Experience in the Arctic, ed. P. W. Lackenbauer and W. A. March (Trenton, ON: Canadian Forces Air Warfare Centre, 2012); Mary Simon, “Militarism and Aboriginal Peoples,” in Arctic Alternatives: Civility or Militarism in the Circumpolar North, ed. Franklyn Griffiths (Toronto: Science for Peace/Samuel Stevens, 1992). E.g., Camp Century in Greenland; see Ingo Heidbrink’s contribution to this volume. During these periods of time, I lived in the village of Sermiligaaq and in the East Greenlandic capital Tasiilaq, and I visited all other villages in the Tasiilaq region, Ittoqqortoormiit in Northeast Greenland, and Nuuk and some other West Greenlandic cities. Research carried out between 2005 and 2008 was part of my PhD project in anthropology, focusing on interpersonal communication and human-environmental relations among the East Greenlandic Inuit. This project and fieldwork led to my book on East Greenland, Sophie Elixhauser, Negotiating Personal Autonomy: Communication and Personhood in East Greenland, Arctic Worlds (New York: Routledge, 2018); and a number of articles, e.g., Elixhauser, “Travelling the East Greenlandic Sea- and Landscape”; Elixhauser, “Moving Along”; Elixhauser, “Unterwegs im Eismeer.” Until recently, little has been written about the impacts of military sites on indigenous people and about the relations between the latter and the military. Likewise, the available East Greenland sources show only brief comments on this theme. For a long time, anthropologists working with indigenous societies across the world have avoided field sites engulfed with war, while at the same time they hardly questioned their own relations with the military and security agencies. During World War II and the first decades of the Cold War, anthropological research was sponsored by national safety authorities, and there was covert anthropological research in the service of counterinsurgency in Latin America and Southeast Asia. From the 1970s onward a strong stance against the military developed; see Hugh Gusterson, “Anthropology and Militarism,” Annual Review of Anthropology 36, no. 1 (October 2007); Stacey Fritz, “DEW Line Passage: Tracing the Legacies of Arctic Militarization” (PhD thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2010). Hugh Gusterson explains that during the Cold War anthropologists had an “informal bargain” with political scientists who wrote about the international state system while they focused on the “tribal

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14. 15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28.

29. 30.

zone”; Gusterson, “Anthropology and Militarism,” 157. This division of labor was dissolved after the Cold War ended, and anthropologists started to write about wars and the international security system and began to reflect about their own position therein. Nowadays there is a strong ethical debate about anthropology’s relation with the military. For a review of the ethical debates in anthropology, with a specific focus on applied anthropology, see Sophie Elixhauser, Ethik in der angewandten Ethnologie. Eine Feldforschung zum Tourismus auf den Philippinen, Fokus Kultur—Trierer Beiträge zur gegenwartsbezogenen Ethnologie 4 (Norderstedt: BoD, 2006). In the literature one finds different spellings for the name of this fjord, including Ikateq, Ikkatteq, and Ikatek. Alan R. Marcus, Out in the Cold: The Legacy of Canada’s Inuit Relocation Experiment in the High Arctic, IWGIA Document no. 71 (Copenhagen: International Work Group on Indigenous Peoples, 1992); Melanie McGrath, The Long Exile: A True Story of Deception and Survival among the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic (London: Fourth Estate, 2006). Jens Brøsted and Mads Fægteborg, Thule—Fangerfolk og Militæranlæg. En RetligHistorisk Undersøgelse af Thule Basens Anlæggelse, Thules Flytning og Befolkningens Erstatningskrav (Copenhagen: Akademsik Forlag, 1987). See Fritz, “DEW Line Passage: Tracing the Legacies of Arctic Militarization”; Simon, “Militarism and Aboriginal Peoples”; P. W. Lackenbauer and Matthew Farish, “The Cold War on Canadian Soil: Militarizing a Northern Environment,” Environmental History 12, no. 4 (October 2007); Lackenbauer and Shackleton, “Inuit–Air Force Relations.” Simon, “Militarism and Aboriginal Peoples,” 56. See Catherine Lutz, ed., The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S. Military Posts (New York: New York University Press, 2009); Verena Traeger, “Der Rechtsstreit Inughuit versus Dänemark,” in Bruchlinien im Eis: Ethnologie des zirkumpolaren Nordens, ed. Stefan Bauer et al. (Vienna: LIT, 2005). Lackenbauer and Shackleton, “Inuit–Air Force Relations,” 73. Melanie Gagnon, Inuit Recollection on the Military Presence in Iqaluit 2 (Iqaluit: Nunavit Arctic College, 2002). Fritz, “DEW Line Passage,” 66. Ibid., 19–20. Ibid., 66. Ibid., 66–70; Catherine Lutz, “Introduction: Bases, Empire, and Global Responses,” in The Bases of Empire. The Global Struggle against U.S. Military Posts, ed. Catherine Lutz (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 21. Fritz, “DEW Line Passage,” 20. Gustav Holm, “Ethnological Sketch of the Angmagsalik Eskimo,” in The Ammassalik Eskimo: Contributions to the Ethnology of the East Greenland Natives, ed. William Thalbitzer, Meddelser om Grønland 39 (Copenhagen: B. Luno, 1911). Joelle Robert-Lamblin, Ammassalik, East Greenland—End or Persistence of an Isolate? Anthropological and Demographical Study on Change, Meddelelser om Grønland, Man & Society 10 (Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, 1986). Conn, Engelmann, and Fairchild, Guarding the United States, chap. 17. Robert-Lamblin, Ammassalik, East Greenland, 95.

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31. Robert Petersen, “East Greenland Before 1950,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 5, Arctic, ed. D. Damas (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1984). 32. G. Nooter, “1884–1984: A Century of Changes in East Greenland,” in Life and Survival in the Arctic: Cultural Changes in the Polar Regions, ed. G. Nooter, Ethnological Serie Verre Naasten Naderbij (Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij, ‘s-Gravenhage, 1984). 33. Robert Petersen, “East Greenland After 1950,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 5, Arctic, ed. D. Damas (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1984), 721. 34. Ibid., 719. 35. Robert-Lamblin, Ammassalik, East Greenland, 21. 36. Greenland Defense Agreement, 9 April 1941, quoted in Conn, Engelmann, and Fairchild, Guarding the United States, 446. 37. Ibid., chap. 17. 38. Karoline Mathiassen, “Efterladenskaber på Ikkatteq: hvem har ansvaret for oprydningen af miljøproblemerne og efterladenskaberne på gamle amerikanske militærbaser i Grønland?” (master’s thesis, Institute for Administration, Ilisimatusarfik, University of Greenland, 2003); Robert-Lamblin, Ammassalik, East Greenland, 46. 39. Paul-Émile Victor and Joelle Robert-Lamblin, La Civilisation du Phoque 1. Jeux, Gestes et Techniques des Eskimo d’Ammassalik (Paris: Éditions Raymond Chabaud/Armand Colin, 1989), 290. 40. Robert-Lamblin, Ammassalik, East Greenland, 46. 41. Ibid., 87. 42. Buijs, Furs and Fabrics, 154. 43. Cunera Buijs, personal communication, 13 December 2012; Buijs added that a further reason for the limited availability of these furs was a decline in the respective seal population, connected to Norwegian hunters coming to the region. 44. Ammassalimiut is the East Greenlandic word for the inhabitants of the Ammassalik region (nowadays called Tasiilaq region). 45. Robert-Lamblin, Ammassalik, East Greenland, 121. 46. Ibid., 46. 47. Tasiilaq residents, personal communication, Summer 2006. 48. Robert-Lamblin, Ammassalik, East Greenland, 81, 87. 49. See also Ivalo Frank, Echoes, documentary film, produced and directed by Ivalo Frank (New York: Kran Film Collective, 2010). Mathiassen further reports of parts of weapon and ammunition that were found at the base, such as machine gun nests and antiaircraft ammunition, including fuse and explosive substances, some of which were appropriated and used by local hunters; Matthiassen, “Efterladenskaber på Ikkatteq,” 62–63. 50. Matthiassen, “Efterladenskaber på Ikkatteq,” 63 (my translation). 51. Among some East Greenlanders nowadays, stories are told about certain nonhuman beings (qivitteq) haunting this place; Elixhauser, Negotiation Personal Autonomy, chap. 8. Similar stories seem to circulate about Narsarsuaq airport in West Greenland; see Birgit K. Pedersen, “A Narrative on Narratives in Contemporary Greenland,” in Proceedings of the 15th Inuit Studies Conference, ed. C. Beatrice and M. Therrien (Paris: INALCO/CNR, 2009).

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52. See Matthiassen, “Efterladenskaber på Ikkatteq”; Colin Woodard, “US Cold-War Waste Irks Greenland: Pentagon Refuses to Clean Up Toxic Military Bases, Saying it Would Set a Bad Precedent,” Christian Monitor, 22 August 2008. 53. Dansk Undenrigspolitisk Institut (DUPI), Grønland Under den Kolde Krieg. Dansk of Amerikansk Sikkerhedspolitik 1945–68 (Copenhagen: DUPI /Danish Institute of International Affairs, 1997). 54. This led to a long political fight between the affected Inuit and the Danish and American authorities; see Traeger, “Der Rechtsstreit Inughuit versus Dänemark.” 55. Fritz, “DEW Line Passage.” 56. J. H. Cloe, “Skibirds on the Ice Cap,” American Aviation Historical Society Journal 22, no. 2 (1977). 57. The early Cold War further involved the setup of a number of US research camps in Greenland, such as Camp Tuto, Camp Fistclench, and Camp Century. The last was the code name for Project Iceworm, a top-secret program to build mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenlandic ice sheet; see DUPI, Grønland Under den Kolde Krieg; Ingo Heidbrink’s contribution to this volume. 58. DUPI, Grønland Under den Kolde Krieg. 59. Ibid., 348. 60. Ibid., 350; quote from Fifth Session of Meetings held between the United States and Danish Delegations in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at 1500 hours on 6 December 1957, “Agreed Minutes, 20 March 1958” (Ministeriet for Grønland, Fælles departementschefarkiv, pl.73. RA). 61. DUPI, Grønland Under den Kolde Krieg, 351. 62. Later on, DYE-4 and the airport had a modest number of staff. In her book from the mid-1980s, Robert-Lamblin speaks of fifteen Americans at the station and twelve to fourteen Danish staff at the airport; Robert-Lamblin, Ammassalik, East Greenland, 91. A Danish magazine article written before the end of DYE-4 mentions thirty men at the station; see Peter Fauslund, “Fra de gamle dage. Bygning af DYE 4—Kulusuk,” DAC Stafetten. 63. Frank, Echoes. 64. Kap Dan is the Danish name for the village Kulusuk. 65. Fred Teeter, “Fred’s Place: DEW Line—Distant Early Warning System,” retrieved 13 January 2014 from http://www.teeter.info/dewstation.html. 66. Robert Gessain, Angmagssalik. Den Påtvungene Civilisation (Copenhagen: Rhodos, 1970), 98. 67. Robert-Lamblin, Ammassalik, East Greenland, 46. 68. These people usually do not speak any more English than other East Greenlanders and rarely seek out their connections to relatives in the United States. Apart from their physical appearances, they do not seem to be greatly distinguishable from other East Greenlandic Inuit. 69. Frank, Echoes. 70. Different ways of spelling have been used, including (sg.) tupileq, tupilaq, and tupilak. 71. Tupilit (sg. tupileq) were originally used for magical purposes by shamans and sorcerers. 72. Robert-Lamblin, Ammassalik, East Greenland, 91.

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73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

Ibid., 92. See Gessain, Angmagssalik, 92. Frank, Echoes. Fritz, “DEW Line Passage,” chap. 5. Michael R. Walsh and Herbert T. Ueda, CRREL Report 98-3: Structural Analysis of DEW Line Station DYE-2, Greenland, 1983–1988 (Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1998). Larry Wilson, “DEWLine Stations,” The DEWLine, retrieved 13 January 2014 from http://www.lwilson.ca/dewline.htm. Frank, Echoes; TELE Greenland and Naviair still keep radio facilities next to the site of the former DYE-4 station. See Woodard, “US Cold-War Waste Irks Greenland.” Conn, Engelmann, and Fairchild, Guarding the United States, 446. Gerda Vilholm, personal communication, 19 January 2014. I thank Janne Flora for helpful comments on this point. Mike Shaw, “The Big Storms of ’73 and ’69,” The DEWLine, retrieved 13 January 2014 from http://lswilson.dewlineadventures.com/dye4storm73/. Walsh and Ueda, CRREL Report 98-3.

Bibliography Aporta, Claudio. “Routes, Trails and Tracks: Trail Breaking among the Inuit of Igloolik [Les Routes, Sentiers et Traces Chez les Inuit d’Igloolik].” Études Inuit Studies 28, no. 2 (2004): 9–38. ———. “Shifting Perspectives on Shifting Ice: Documenting and Representing Inuit Use of the Sea Ice.” Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien 55, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 6–19. Brøsted, Jens, and Mads Fægteborg. Thule—Fangerfolk og Militæranlæg. En Retlig-Historisk Undersøgelse af Thule Basens Anlæggelse, Thules Flytning og Befolkningens Erstatningskrav. Copenhagen: Akademsik Forlag, 1987. Brown, Dale M. “The Fate of Greenland’s Vikings.” Archaeology, February 28, 2000. Retrieved 10 April 2017 from http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/. Buijs, Cunera. Furs and Fabrics: Transformations, Clothing and Identity in East Greenland. Leiden: CNWS Publications, 2004. Cloe, J. H. “Skibirds on the Ice Cap.” American Aviation Historical Society Journal 22, no. 2 (1977): 142–53. Conn, Stetson, Rose C. Engelman, and Byron Fairchild. Guarding the United States and its Outposts. Washington, DC: Center of Military History United States Army, 2000. Cruikshank, Julie. Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imaginations. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2005. Dansk Undenrigspolitisk Institut (DUPI). Grønland Under den Kolde Krieg. Dansk of Amerikansk Sikkerhedspolitik 1945–68. Copenhagen: DUPI/Danish Institute of International Affairs, 1997. Elixhauser, Sophie. Ethik in der Angewandten Ethnologie. Eine Feldforschung zum Tourismus auf den Philippinen. Fokus Kultur—Trierer Beiträge zur gegenwartsbezogenen Ethnologie. Norderstedt: BoD, 2006.

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———. “Travelling the East Greenlandic Sea- and Landscape: Encounters, Places, and Stories.” Mobilities 10, no. 4 (2015): 531–51. ———. Negotiating Personal Autonomy: Communication and Personhood in East Greenland. Arctic Worlds, vol. 2. New York: Routledge, 2018. ———. “Moving Along: Wayfinding and Non-verbal Communication across the Frozen Seascape of East Greenland.” In At Home on the Waves: Human Habitation of the Sea from the Mesolithic to Today, edited by T. J. King and G. Robinson. New York: Berghahn Books, in press. ———. “Unterwegs im Eismeer: Mobilität, persönliche Autonomie und sozialer Zusammenhalt im ländlichen Ostgrönland.” In Grönland. Kontinuitäten und Brüche im Leben der grönländischen Inuit, edited by F. Sowa. Leverkusen: Budrich UniPress, forthcoming. Fauslund, Peter. “Fra de gamle dage. Bygning af DYE 4—Kulusuk.” DAC Stafetten. Retrieved 22 January 2013 from https://www.yumpu.com/s/MXQlasTpzBYsNgv9. Fifth Session of Meetings held between the United States and Danish Delegations in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at 1500 hours on 6 December 1957. “Agreed Minutes, 20 March 1958.” Ministeriet for Grønland, Fælles departementschefarkiv, pl. 73. RA. Frank, Ivalo. Echoes. Documentary film. Produced and directed by Ivalo Frank. New York: Kran Film Collective, 2010. Fritz, Stacey. “DEW Line Passage: Tracing the Legacies of Arctic Militarization.” PhD thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2010. Gagnon, Melanie. Inuit Recollection on the Military Presence in Iqaluit 2. Iqaluit: Nunavit Arctic College, 2002. Gearheard, Shari F., Lena K. Holm, and Henry Huntington, eds. The Meaning of Ice: People and Sea Ice in Three Arctic Communities. Montreal: International Polar Institute, 2013. Gessain, Robert. Angmagssalik. Den Påtvungene Civilisation. Copenhagen: Rhodos, 1970. Griffiths, Fraklyn, ed. Arctic Alternatives: Civility or Militarism in the Circumpolar North. Toronto: Science for Peace, Samuel Stevens, 1993. Gusterson, Hugh. “Anthropology and Militarism.” Annual Review of Anthropology 36, no. 1 (2007): 155–75. Helander, Elina, and Tero Mustonen, eds. Snowscapes, Dreamscapes: A Snowchange Community Book of Change. Vaasa: Tampere Polytechnic Publications, 2004. Holm, Gustav. “Ethnological Sketch of the Angmagsalik Eskimo.” In The Ammassalik Eskimo: Contributions to the Ethnology of the East Greenland Natives, edited by William Thalbitzer, 1–148. Meddelser om Grønland 39. Copenhagen: B. Luno, 1911. Krupnik, Igor, and Dyanna Jolly, eds. The Earth Is Faster Now: Indigenous Observations of Arctic Environmental Change. Fairbanks, AK: Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, 2002. Lackenbauer, P. Whitney, and Matthew Farish. “The Cold War on Canadian Soil: Militarizing a Northern Environment.” Environmental History 12, no. 4 (October 2007): 920–50. Lackenbauer, P. Whitney, and Ryan Shackleton. “Inuit–Air Force Relations in the Qikiqtani Region during the Early Cold War.” In De-icing Required! The Historical Dimension of the Canadian Air Force’s Experience in the Arctic, edited by P. Whitney Lackenbauer and W. A. March, 74–93. Trenton, ON: Canadian Forces Air Warfare Centre, 2012. Lutz, Catherine, ed. The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S. Military Posts. New York: New York University Press, 2009.

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———. “Introduction: Bases, Empire, and Global Responses.” In The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S. Military Posts. Edited by Catherine Lutz, 1–44. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Marcus, Alan R. 1992.in Greenland, see Heidbrink 2017, this volume. Out in the Cold: The Legacy of Canada’s Inuit Relocation Experiment in the High Arctic. IWGIA Document no. 71. Copenhagen: International Work Group on Indigenous Peoples, 1992. Mathiassen, Karoline. “Efterladenskaber på Ikkatteq: hvem har ansvaret for oprydningen af miljøproblemerne og efterladenskaberne på gamle amerikanske militærbaser i Grønland?” Master’s thesis, Institute for Administration, Ilisimatusarfik, University of Greenland, 2003. McGrath, Melanie. The Long Exile: A True Story of Deception and Survival among the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. London: Fourth Estate, 2006. Nooter, G. “1884–1984: A Century of Changes in East Greenland.” In Life and Survival in the Arctic: Cultural Changes in the Polar Regions. Ethnological Serie Verre Naasten Naderbij, edited by G. Nooter, 121–43. Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij, ‘s-Gravenhage, 1984. Pedersen, Birgit K. “A Narrative on Narratives in Contemporary Greenland.” In Proceedings of the 15th Inuit Studies Conference, edited by C. Beatrice and M. Therrien, 1–14. Paris: INALCO/CNR, 2009. Retrieved 12 January 2010 from http://www.inuitoralityconfer ence.com/. Petersen, Robert. “East Greenland after 1950.” In Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 5, Arctic, edited by D. Damas, 718–23. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1984. ———. “East Greenland before 1950.” In Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 5, Arctic, edited by D. Damas, 622–40. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1984. Robert-Lamblin, Joelle. Ammassalik, East Greenland—End or Persistence of an Isolate? Anthropological and Demographical Study on Change. Meddelelser om Grønland, Man & Society 10. Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, 1986. Shaw, Mike. “The Big Storms of ’73 and ’69.” The DEWLine. Retrieved 13 January 2014 from http://lswilson.dewlineadventures.com/dye4storm73/. Simon, Mary. “Militarism and Aboriginal Peoples.” In Arctic Alternatives: Civility or Militarism in the Circumpolar North, edited by Franklyn Griffiths, 55–67. Toronto: Science for Peace/Samuel Stevens, 1992. Teeter, Fred. “Fred’s Place: DEW Line—Distant Early Warning System.” Retrieved 13 January 2014 from http://www.teeter.info/dewstation.html. Traeger, Verena. “Der Rechtsstreit Inughuit versus Dänemark.” In Bruchlinien im Eis: Ethnologie des zirkumpolaren Nordens, edited by Stefan Bauer, Stefan Donecker, Aline Ehrenfried, and Markus Hirnsperger, 71–86. Vienna: LIT, 2005. Tyrrell, Martina. “Enacting and Renewing Identity, Kinship and Humanity on the Sea Ice.” Polar Geography 36, no. 1–2 (2013): 30–46. Victor, Paul-Émile, and Joelle Robert-Lamblin. La Civilisation du Phoque 1. Jeux, Gestes et Techniques des Eskimo d’Ammassalik. Paris: Éditions Raymond Chabaud/Armand Colin, 1989. Walsh, Michael R., and Herbert T. Ueda. CRREL REPORT 98-3: Structural Analysis of DEW Line Station DYE-2, Greenland, 1983–1988. Hanover, NH: US Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, 1998. Retrieved 23 January 2014 from www.dtic.mil/ cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA353518.

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Whitridge, Peter. “Landscape, Houses, Bodies, Things: ‘Place’ and the Archaeology of Inuit Imagineries.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 11, no. 2 (June 2004): 213–50. Wilson, Larry. “DEWLine Stations.” The DEW Line. Retrieved 13 January 2014 from http:// www.lwilson.ca/dewline.htm. Woodard, Colin. “US Cold-War Waste Irks Greenland: Pentagon Refuses to Clean Up Toxic Military Bases, Saying It Would Set a Bad Precedent.” Christian Monitor, 22 August 2008. Retrieved 17 January 2014 from www.csmonitor.com/Environment/ Living-Green/2008/0822/us-cold-war-waste-irks-greenland.

/ PART II Politics of Confrontation and Cooperation

/

CHAPTER 5

Creating Open Territorial Rights in Cold and Icy Places Cold War Rivalries and the Antarctic and Outer Space Treaties Roger D. Launius

Introduction It is almost a truism that the United States in the 1950s worked with the Soviet Union and other great powers to ensure that both Antarctica and outer space became places where nations could operate unimpeded by national sovereignty issues. This first emerged in the mid-1950s with efforts to ensure that pursuits undertaken as a result of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in Antarctica were dedicated to the advance of scientific knowledge.1 A similar approach to dealing with the extremely important region of outer space was attained during the same period. The United States’ “Open Skies” doctrine allowing all to operate unimpeded in outer space proved effective in ensuring transit of civil, military, and commercial spacecraft of all varieties during the Cold War.2 This essay argues that US efforts in both Antarctica and outer space were part of a much larger endeavor to ensure the twin objectives of free use of territory for the United States not already under an individual nation’s control and the prohibition of any claim of suzerainty over territory by the Soviet Union. This effort emerged in the Cold War confrontation after World War II and was exacerbated by the fact that traditional European colonial powers were forced to divest themselves of their territories and the long-standing—at least since 1500—European hegemony began to wane. It was carried to its logical conclusion in Antarctica, where individual sovereignty rights were circumscribed, and these same prerogatives were also extended into outer space. In the context of tense international rivalries and geopolitical power plays during the Cold War, the curtailment of territorial rights proved a unique and perhaps necessary solution to the larger competition among the two superpowers.3

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This strategy, which found ready acceptance among the principal protagonists of the Cold War, manifested itself in the creation of two path-breaking treaties that have governed these cold and icy regimes to the present: the Antarctic Treaty signed in 1959 and the Treaty on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space signed in 1967.4 At a fundamental level, the IGY, the concern over Antarctica, the quest for “freedom of space,” and the Sputnik crisis were all interrelated challenges in managing conflict in strikingly new harsh and extreme environments opened during the Cold War. They were handled by these rivals in an essentially similar manner, a structure that has survived for more than half a century. Both treaties, and their ancillary governing conventions, were predicated on the belief that nothing of intrinsic value was present either in Antarctica or in outer space. At present both of these legal structures are fragile instruments and under persistent assault from several quarters, especially by military and commercial interests. Interpretations of the governance of outer space and Antarctica have ranged from idealistic—extreme regions that have been dedicated to science in which geopolitics are subverted to the quest for knowledge—to a cynical perspective that argues that Cold War geopolitics drove all decisions and subverted everything else to state security ends and international rivalries.5

Incursion into Antarctica The first recorded instances of Western civilization’s investigation of Antarctica, Terra Australis Incognita—the unknown southern land—may be traced to the voyages of the British captain James Cook, who sailed into the region briefly in the seventeenth century.6 During this time, establishment of territorial claims on Antarctica created a morass of conflicting, cantankerous titles on various parts of the continent. In the decade after World War II, international intrigue and geopolitical rivalry sparked intense disagreements over Antarctica, and on more than one occasion the potential for violence arose.7 Add to this the Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union; the result was a sort of stalemate over governance and usage. Historian Dian O. Belanger has made the case that two central issues changed the situation in Antarctica in the 1950s: “The first was the swift postwar descent into a tense and terrifying cold war: for example, Europe divided by the Iron Curtain; Communist expansion in Asia; and, especially, the nuclear arms race. . . . The second result was that science . . . emerged from the conflict with enormous prestige and political influence.”8 The emergence of this situation created an environment in which the long-standing paradigm that had dominated Antarctic activities until this time could no longer be sustained. The Cold War

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propelled the necessity of action; international scientific pursuits offered a benign means of doing so.

Enter the International Geophysical Year The International Geophysical Year (IGY) served magnificently as a vehicle for changing the Antarctic situation. The genesis of the IGY took place at a dinner party in the home of James Van Allen in Bethesda, Maryland, in the summer of 1950. This event has taken on legendary status and serves a range of purposes from a nearly mystical birth for the IGY to the reaffirming of the authority of science in modern life. At some level it may be viewed as a cabal led by Van Allen, British physicist Sydney Chapman, and American science entrepreneur Lloyd V. Berkner to “hoodwink” the nations of the world into pursuing an aggressive scientific proFigure 5.1. IGY symbol, the logo of the gram that ensured funding and status International Geophysical Year, 1957–58. for activities never dreamt of before. At another, it may be interpreted as cagey politicians manipulating the scientific community to provide the IGY as a stalking horse for the resolution of a thorny geopolitical problem. Indeed, it is both of these.9 Pressed by Berkner, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) agreed in 1952 to pursue a comprehensive series of global geophysical activities to span the period July 1957–December 1958.10 The IGY was timed to coincide with the high Source: National Science Foundation. point of the eleven-year cycle of sunspot activity. It eventually involved sixty-seven nations undertaking research in eleven major scientific areas: earth sciences, aurora and airglow, cosmic rays, geomagnetism, gravity, ionospheric physics, precision mapping, meteorology, oceanography, seismology, and solar activity. More than four thousand research stations participated in the cooperative endeavor. While efforts were concentrated in the polar regions, terrestrial stations elsewhere also yielded valuable scientific data. In the process scientists defined the mid-ocean ridges (developing the theories of plate tectonics and the nature of earth’s crust that has defined modern geology), discovered the Van Allen radiation belts using data from Explorer 1 and Explorer 3, charted ocean depths and ocean currents, and measured a range of terrestrial phenomena, from the magnetic field

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to upper atmospheric winds to the geophysical nature of the planet.11 In the run-up to the beginning of the IGY, Berkner described the excitement it offered in the pursuit of science: “Tired of war and dissension, men of all nations have turned to ‘Mother Earth’ for common efforts on which all find it easy to agree.”12 Two overwhelmingly significant events occurred as a result of the IGY. The first was the development of a means for multiple nations to engage in scientific activities on a continent under no one’s control. The establishment of this peaceful, collaborative occupation of Antarctica is a subject of great significance.13 The second major event emerging from IGY was the space age, begun on 4 October 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial earth satellite, following it almost a month later with Sputnik 2. The United States followed soon thereafter with Explorer 1, on 31 January 1958.14 Historian Walter A. McDougall lays out well the IGY origins of the space age but condemns those origins as “the institutionalization of technological change for state purposes, that is, the state-funded and managed R&D explosion of our time.”15 In this view, science found itself in the service of the state for ends far removed from the apolitical ideal of many scientists.

The IGY Satellite Proposal President Dwight D. Eisenhower was also not unreceptive to increases in funding for space activities purely to further scientific understanding. The president’s approval of the IGY satellite effort is instructive on this score. As early as 1950, a small group of scientists in the United States began discussing among themselves the possibility of using earth-circling satellites to obtain scientific information about the planet. In 1952, urged on by these same American scientists, the ICSU proposed that the IGY study terrestrial relations during a period of maximum solar activity.16 In October 1954, at the behest of essentially this same group of US scientists, ICSU challenged nations to use their missiles being developed for war to launch scientific satellites to support the IGY research program. In July 1955, largely the same enclave of American scientists convinced Eisenhower that the United States should respond to the ICSU call for participation in the IGY by launching a scientific satellite.17 Although he approved the IGY satellite, called Vanguard, Eisenhower was cost-conscious about it, especially as it seemed to grow in cost and complexity with every review. He repeatedly wondered about its voracious appetite for public funds, especially since Vanguard supposedly took a back seat to national security space activities, most notably the crash program to develop ballistic missiles. From its initial cost estimates, Vanguard had mushroomed to a cost of $67.9 million by August 1956 and to $110 mil-

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lion by the summer of 1957.18 While concerned about this growth, Eisenhower did not want to cancel the program, although his secretary of the treasury recommended as much, because of its use as a tool in foreign policy. Instead, the president forcefully reminded his top advisers that the costly instrumentation that scientists were now calling for “had not been envisaged” and “stressed that the element of national prestige, so strongly emphasized in NSC 5520, depended on getting a satellite into its orbit, and not on the instrumentation of the scientific satellite.”19 The budgetary growth of the Vanguard program, transforming it from the simple task of putting any type of satellite into orbit into a project to launch a satellite with “considerable instrumentation,” reminded Eisenhower of the worst type of technological inflation, as every scientist seemed to want to hang another piece of equipment on the vehicle.20

Establishment of the Open Skies Doctrine The American effort to launch an IGY satellite failed to beat into orbit the Soviet Union’s related efforts. In the launch of Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957, the Soviets established the overwhelmingly critical principle of overflight in space, the flight in space over a foreign nation for any nonlethal purpose free from the fear of attack. This made possible orbiting reconnaissance satellites operated by both Cold War rivals and served more than virtually any other technology as a stabilizing influence in the Cold War. The ability to see what rivals were doing helped to ensure that national leaders on both sides did not make decisions based on faulty intelligence. This enabled both sides to make decisions based on timely, accurate information. President Lyndon B. Johnson did not overestimate the importance of spaceflight technology in 1967 when he said that the United States probably spent between $35 and $40 billion on it, but “if nothing else had come of it except the knowledge we’ve gained from space photography, it would be worth 10 times what the whole program has cost.”21 In a critical document, “Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack,” issued on 14 February 1955, US defense officials raised the question of international law governing territorial waters and airspace, in which individual nations controlled those regions as if they were their own soil. That international custom allowed nations to board and confiscate vessels within territorial waters near their coastlines and to force down aircraft flying in their territorial airspace. This has resulted in shoot-downs on occasion, as when the Soviet Union downed a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 in 1983. But in 1957 space as a territory had not yet been defined, and US leaders argued that it should be recognized as beyond the normal confines of territorial limits. An opposite position, however, argued for the extension of territorial limits into space above a nation into infinity.22

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“Freedom of space” became an extremely significant issue for those concerned with orbiting satellites, because the imposition of territorial prerogatives outside the atmosphere could legally restrict any nation from orbiting satellites without the permission of nations that might be overflown. Since the United States was in a position to capitalize on “freedom of space” it favored an open position. Many other nations had little interest in establishing a free access policy that allowed the United States to orbit reconnaissance satellites overhead. President Eisenhower tried to obtain a “freedom of space” decision on 21 July 1955, when he proposed it at a US/USSR summit in Geneva, Switzerland. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev rejected the proposal, however, saying that it was an obvious American attempt to “accumulate target information.” Eisenhower later admitted, “We knew the Soviets wouldn’t accept it, but we took a look and thought it was a good move.”23 The Americans thereafter worked quietly to establish the precedent. Then Sputnik, a scientific satellite, overflew the United States and other nations of the world. Four days later, on 8 October 1957, Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles told the president, “The Russians have . . . done us a good turn, unintentionally, in establishing the concept of freedom of international space.” Eisenhower immediately grasped this as a means of pressing ahead with the launching of a reconnaissance satellite. The precedent held for later satellites, and by the end of 1958 the tenuous principle of “freedom of space” had been established. By happenstance, the Russian space program had established the US-backed precedent for free access.24 Throughout 1958 the Eisenhower administration affirmed the free-accessto-space position already established in precedent and declared that space would not be used for warlike purposes. At the same time it asserted that reconnaissance satellites and other military support activities that could be aided by satellites, such as communications and weather, were peaceful activities, since they assisted in strategic deterrence and therefore averted war. This was a critical space policy decision, as it provided for open use of space and fashioned a virtual “inspection system” to forewarn of surprise attack through the use of reconnaissance satellites. Some have speculated that Eisenhower might actually have held back the US effort to launch an orbital satellite to allow the Soviets to do so first, thereby establishing this all-important principle of overflight. After all, had the United States launched before the Soviet Union, Khrushchev might have protested it as a violation of his nation’s airspace. This could have thrown the “freedom of space” concept into years of intense and confrontational international negotiation. While this is a fascinating possibility, there is no evidence to believe that the Eisenhower administration actually conspired to lose the race to launch the first satellite. In reacting to Sputnik, Eisenhower did achieve the

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right of overflight because of the Soviet launch. But this was serendipity, a single happy consequence of what was otherwise a set of poor decisions. But, at the same time, Eisenhower was pressed by a set of political exigencies, a critical mass of interests, and a key cadre of scientific and technical officials within the federal government and their supporters in universities, corporations, and think tanks to create a powerful, large, and costly federal agency to carry out space exploration.

The Antarctic Experience In many respects, the history of cooperation and collaboration in Antarctic science mirrors the larger story of how the various global powers have interrelated since the conclusion of World War II. If one were to characterize it accurately throughout the last fifty-plus years, the undeniable conclusion is that both parties have enjoyed an uneasy relationship in which they have recognized that they were better off cooperating rather than competing and in which they constantly jockeyed, even while cooperating, for a superior position vis-à-vis the other nations in partnership. Certainly, that has been the case among senior officials of the United States, many over the years viewing Figure 5.2. Aerial view of the first permanent station built at the South Pole, taken on 4 December 1956. The US Navy built seven stations, including one at the South Pole, in support of the International Geophysical Year.

Photo: Dick Prescott. Courtesy of the National Science Foundation, Washington, DC.

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the nation’s effort in Antarctica at a fundamental level as a program aimed at least in part at ensuring the United States’ foreign policy objectives. If securing those objectives required cooperative relations in Antarctica, such was most assuredly acceptable and supportable as a national objective. After the IGY, leaders in the effort met in Washington, DC, to sign the Antarctic Treaty, intended to “internationalize” Antarctica as a “continent dedicated to peace and science.” Article IV of the Antarctic Treaty suspended (or “froze” in the official pun of the conference) all sovereignty claims to the continent for its duration, bringing to an end the active phase of very real geopolitical disputes over the continent. To many people at the time it appeared as if the idealism of science had triumphed over politics. This achievement was all the more remarkable for bringing the two superpowers together at the height of the Cold War. Many observers have followed this idealistic interpretation of the connection between the IGY and the Antarctic Treaty, and the southern continent tends to be held up as an all too rare example of scientific cooperation fostering political harmony. As early as the debate on ratification, US polar scientist and explorer Laurence McKinley Gould testified with a level of hyperbole unusual even for the Senate that the treaty was “a document unique in history that may take its place alongside the Magna Carta and other great symbols of man’s quest for enlightenment and order.”25 An overstatement, to be sure, but this type of exaggeration has remained a staple of the treaty’s advocates ever since. For example, as stated in a 2009 assessment, the Antarctic Treaty was responsible for three key positive developments over a fifty-year period: 1. It has preserved 10 percent of the Earth for peaceful purposes. 2. It has created the world’s first nuclear-free zone. 3. It has instituted an unprecedented international scientific collaboration.

This statement went on to celebrate the Antarctic Treaty System as a singularly positive development and the model for all future collaborative endeavors. “It has done these things in the face of significant political and economic challenges over the decades,” observers stated. “Not only must these achievements be recognized, celebrated and publicized, but they must also offer guidance to lawyers, diplomats, scientists and lobbyists in pursuing similar goals elsewhere in the world.”26 Of course, the IGY did play an important role in the resolution of the Antarctic sovereignty dispute, but not in quite the idealistic way that the traditional narrative has suggested.27 The American National Security Council proposed as late as June 1954 a territorial solution for Antarctica that affirmed control of the continent “by the United States and friendly powers and exclude our most probable enemies.”28 The actual science of the IGY, and the improved

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understanding of the Antarctic environment that it facilitated, played an important role in the partial resolution of the question of sovereignty. As officials in the treaty nations, especially in Great Britain and the United States, learned more about the reality that Antarctica contained little or nothing of immediate economic value, they came to favor a limited internationalization of the continent. Historian John Krige has explained how collaboration has taken place in a variety of settings where very little is at stake. He astutely commented that “collaboration has worked most smoothly when the science or technology concerned is not of direct strategic (used here to mean commercial or military) importance. As soon as a government feels that its national interests are directly involved in a field of R&D, it would prefer to ‘go it alone.’” He also noted that the success of cooperative projects may take as their central characteristic that they have “no practical application in at least the short to medium term.”29 I would add that the sole exception to this perspective might be when nations decide that for prestige or diplomatic purposes it is imperative to cooperate, and something like the International Space Station of the last part of the twentieth century is a prime example.30 The results of the IGY convinced US officials that internationalization would be the best course for Antarctic politics. US officials wanted to prevent the Cold War from spreading to this southern continent, ideally by excluding the Soviet Union from the region. They feared, with some justification, that a sovereignty dispute might be exploited by the Communist Bloc as a demonstration of divisions within the Western Alliance. When it became increasingly clear that Antarctica contained little in the short to medium term that could justify a formal US claim to any part of the continent, the central US policy objective became the diffusion of political tensions. Just like their British counterparts, US officials were unwilling to give up for good their “historic rights” in Antarctica, and as a consequence, they did not want any sort of genuine internationalization, such as that which might have happened had the Antarctic question been handed over to the United Nations. Having decided that some form of limited internationalization would be the best option for their interests in Antarctica, officials in Great Britain and the United States set out to bring this about. The rhetoric of scientific internationalism would be one of the principal tools for achieving their political goals. Science in general, and the goodwill generated by the IGY in particular, offered a nonthreatening way to bring territorial rivals together to discuss political questions. A series of secret meetings set in motion the process that would lead to the signature of the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. Initially the four countries disagreed on the question of Soviet involvement. US officials, perhaps somewhat naively, believed that they could create a treaty regime for Antarctica that would exclude the Soviet Union. British officials—who were especially keen

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on resolving the dispute—argued, more realistically, that the Communist superpower would have to be included for any internationalization of Antarctica to work. After some discussion, the British position prevailed.31 Without question, advocates of an Antarctic Treaty exploited the “goodwill” generated by the IGY. Argentina, Chile, and other claimants found themselves swept along, somewhat reluctantly, by the process of internationalization. As Paul Arthur Berkman has commented: Building on the momentum of scientific cooperation during the IGY, in May 1958, President Eisenhower invited the Soviet Union and the other ten nations involved with Antarctic research (the seven claimants, plus Belgium, Japan, and South Africa) to seek an effective means of ensuring that the “vast uninhabited wastes of Antarctic shall be used only for peaceful purposes.” Over the next 18 months, 60 secret meetings were convened in the United States, culminating in the Conference on Antarctica between 15 October and 1 December 1959, when the Antarctic Treaty was signed.32

The end result was generally favorable to all participating countries, as they found themselves members of the Antarctic Treaty system’s “exclusive club,” which continues to govern the continent to this day. The traditional narrative of the internationalization of Antarctica suggests that the IGY functioned as a deus ex machina coming out of nowhere to resolve the continent’s vexing political problems through a wave a scientific idealism. In this interpretation, the cooperation and goodwill generated by the IGY acted as a force “above politics,” with the ability to overcome the petty squabbling that plagued the question of Antarctic sovereignty. IGY science fundamentally changed perceptions of the Antarctic environment and, at least in the short term, dispelled the myth that Antarctica could possess invaluable minerals. This reassessment of the economic worth of Antarctica changed political attitudes toward the continent, and both Great Britain and the United States became amenable to a limited internationalization of the continent. Having decided that they wanted internationalization, the British and North Americans then exploited scientific goodwill as a means to bring this about.33 In many ways the United States got exactly what they wanted from the Antarctic Treaty of 1959: limited internationalism that diffused political tensions, while claims (for the British) and the reservation of the right to make claims (for the United States) remained in a state of suspended animation, to be brought out again if ever the occasion should demand. The Argentineans and Chileans viewed the Antarctic environment differently, seeing it as an “integral part” of their national territories. They opposed any form of internationalization and only participated in the Antarctic Treaty negotiations when they realized that the weight of international opinion was against them.

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Figure 5.3. The South Pole Station in 1957, taken during the austral summer of 1956–57.

Photo: Cliff Dickey. Courtesy of the National Science Foundation, Washington, DC.

Nevertheless, despite this reluctance, their participation helped to give credibility to the solution of limited internationalization. Science also offered the Antarctic Treaty signatories a useful tool for excluding unwanted countries from their new political club.34 Far from being a simple story of (good) science trumping (bad) politics, the history of the connection between the IGY and the Antarctic Treaty involved the political exploitation of scientific goodwill to achieve essentially geopolitical objectives. Rather than bringing imperial interests in Antarctica to an end, as the traditional interpretation would suggest, the Antarctic Treaty reformulated and retained these interests. This observation opens Antarctica to study from a postcolonial framework. Postcolonial scholarship seeks to highlight and challenge continued imperial practices of exclusion and unequal power relationships after the “decolonization” of most of the colonized world in the mid-twentieth century. According to two scholars exploring this issue, “The period 1954–64 in Antarctica shows the transformation of traditional colonialism into particularly modern forms.” They noted that while the justification for American efforts in Antarctica rested on science, those scientific activities held profound geopolitical consequences. Despite the numerous achievements of the Ant-

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arctic Treaty system in protecting the environment and maintaining peace, it remains firmly rooted in the power structures of Western imperialism and the Cold War. The Antarctic Treaty itself is a distinctly postcolonial treaty, because the retention of imperial influence is written into its text.35 In addition to having an intrinsic value of its own—especially at a time of growing awareness of the centrality of the southern continent to the global environmental system—science has also done much to ensure a peaceful coexistence in Antarctica. Scientific cooperation laid the basis for half a century of collaborative activities in a region that was becoming increasingly contentious in the 1940s and 1950s. As a consequence of its success, scientific activity plays an important role in legitimizing the Antarctic Treaty system, in both its positive and negative dimensions. Since that time, the United States has periodically reaffirmed the principles of the Antarctic Treaty. For example, in October 1970, President Richard M. Nixon stated US policy for Antarctica as encompassing the following: To maintain the Antarctic Treaty and ensure that this continent will continue to be used only for peaceful purposes and shall not become an area or object of international discord. To foster cooperative scientific research for the solution of worldwide and regional problems, including environmental monitoring and prediction and assessment of resources. To protect the Antarctic environment and develop appropriate measures to ensure the equitable and wise use of living and non-living resources.

The president added that “science has provided a successful basis for international accord, and the Antarctic is the only continent where science serves as the principal expression of national policy and interest.” He supported continuation of its primacy on the continent. At the same time, thereafter, as stated periodically in national security documents, the United States intended “maintaining an active and influential United States presence in the Antarctic” that is “responsive to United States scientific, economic, and political objectives.”36

The Establishment of the Outer Space Treaty While Dwight D. Eisenhower deserves credit for the establishment of “open skies” and overflight as a principle in space, as well as his role in pressing scientific internationalism as the raison d’être of activities in Antarctica, successors of another political party put their own cast on this structure in 1967 with the

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“Treaty on the Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and other Celestial Bodies.” Its first principle ensconced “freedom of space.” Regardless of some relatively modest alterations over time, this rested on a remarkably consistent policy for the United States during the first fifty years of the space age. Six basic principles enunciated in various policy documents, including this treaty, have been deployed by the United States. First, the United States and the Soviet Union established in the 1950s and has maintained to the present “freedom of space,” ensuring free access to space and the unimpeded passage through space of all satellites and other vehicles regardless of national origin and for whatever purposes intended. Any interference with operational space systems became an infringement on sovereignty and could be construed as an act of war. Second, the parties agreed not to press claims of sovereignty over any part of space or its bodies. Third, the right to defend against attack was preserved and would be considered self-defense just as on the earth. Fourth, this policy regime explicitly recognized all the various nations’ civil, military, and intelligence programs as legitimate. Fifth, ownership of space assets rested with the original entity placing them in space, and laws of salvage similar to that of the sea were extended to space. Finally, all parties agreed that no weapons of mass destruction were to be placed in space, especially ensconcing this decision in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.37 In truth several international organizations have been involved in the governance of space activities. The United Nations General Assembly established the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in 1959 to discuss scientific, technical, and legal issues related to international space activities; sixtyone states are members of the committee. This committee has provided the forum for the development of five treaties and a number of declarations of principles related to space activities. The most important of these is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which set forth the general legal principles governing space activities. Other parts of the United Nations system, most notably the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), have also long been engaged in space-related activities, responsible as it is for allocation of radio frequencies and orbital locations for satellite services. Effectively, this represented an Outer Space Treaty Regime comparable to the Antarctic Treaty System.38 These treaties were developed at a time when the Cold War reigned supreme in geopolitics and rival governments were the dominant actors in space, before commercial space activities had much of a place in space operations. While the Outer Space Treaty Regime demands that space be used for “peaceful purposes,” it did not preclude “defense and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national security and other goals.”39 Like the Antarctic Treaty System, it emerged from the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in the mid-1960s. Its political genesis may be seen in documents from

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the Johnson White House in December 1966 about the proposed space treaty and other initiatives to lessen Cold War rivalries: (a) Moving toward a more cooperative relation with the USSR in this field will reinforce our over-all policy toward the Soviets. (b) More importantly: It will save money, which can go to (i) foreign aid, (ii) domestic purposes—thus mitigating the political strain of the war in Vietnam.

The analysis went on to say that “while largely atmospheric in their effects, the UN ‘no bombs in orbit’ resolution and the proposed celestial bodies/outer space treaty are pointed in this direction [of creating a legal regime for governing space]. We need to seek our potential problem areas and develop practical ways of resolving them.”40 While the Antarctic Treaty served as a framework for this Outer Space Treaty, the fundamental difference was that only the United States and the USSR had any experience whatsoever in space. According to congressional hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations in 1967, the Outer Space Treaty was first pursued as a means of ensuring that outer space be explored and developed exclusively under peaceful conditions and working collaboratively with other countries, as in the case with the Antarctic Treaty. Accordingly, the centerpiece of the space treaty, negotiated through the United Nations, centered on concerns over military expansion and national security, coupled with a desire to ensure the sanctity of “freedom of international space.” Scientific activities in space also served as peacekeeping surrogates and cooperative ventures that ensured internationalization and diffused political tensions—that the political exploitation of scientific goodwill facilitated essentially political objectives. For both treaties, science legitimized international control by creating mechanisms for management and goals for continued rational use that have continued to this day.41 The seventeen articles of the Outer Space Treaty have considerable overlap and similarity with the fourteen articles of the original Antarctic Treaty. Both stipulate exclusively peaceful uses and strict limitations on military activities and the use of nuclear weapons and materials. Both also prohibit governments from extending national sovereignty or making new resource claims. Both treaties include stipulations allowing use for scientific research, allowing the use of military personnel and/or equipment for scientific research, but contain strict verbiage against military fortifications, maneuvers, and weapons testing. The Outer Space treaty allows for all countries, irrespective of economic means, to take advantage of the scientific development of space, whereas Article III of the Antarctic Treaty encourages Specialized Agencies of the United

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Nations and other international organizations having a scientific or technical interest in Antarctica.42 Notable differences had to do with the nature of space exploration and the rescue of astronauts and cosmonauts, with agreement that all signatories would provide assistance in the event of accidents or emergencies. For example, invoking the Outer Space Treaty as the rationale during the Apollo 13 crisis in 1970, the Soviet Union famously offered assistance to the United States to rescue the astronauts either in space or at sea. The United States just as famously declined this assistance, believing it motivated just as much by Soviet desire to inspect American technology as to assist in the rescue. There were numerous differences between the priorities of the United States and the USSR when negotiating the Outer Space Treaty. Perhaps the most difficult was the effort of the Soviets to ban on all private enterprise in space: “All activities of any kind pertaining to the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out solely by States.” Unsure of the objective by the Soviets in making this proposal—was it just a negotiating tactic or “an attempt to extend Communist principles to outer space”—the United States proposed a compromise that stated, “That States bear international responsibility for national activities in space, whether carried on by government authority or by other entities.”43 Accordingly, the Outer Space Treaty System may be considered permissive in handling most commercial activities in space, containing principles useful to economic development. In regard to space resource utilization, private appropriation of extracted resources is even permissible under the terms of the Outer Space Treaty.44 In such cases as this, the use of vague language ensured that the treaty could be adopted, but also that it would require later refinement. At the US Senate ratification hearings for the treaty, Arthur Goldberg, who led the US negotiating team, admitted this. When asked about Article I of the treaty, he told the Figure 5.4. This picture of the limb of the earth, looking north past Antarctica, is a mosaic of eleven images taken during a ten-minute period around 5:45 p.m. (PST), 8 December 1990, by the Galileo spacecraft’s imaging system.

Photo: Public domain, NASA/JPL image (https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00116).

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Senators, “The article was a ‘broad general declaration of purposes’ that would have no specific impact until its intent was detailed in subsequent, detailed agreements.”45 These issues had to be made more specific over time as additional treaties, regulations, and international agreements were struck.46

The Antarctic and Outer Space Treaties after the Cold War The two separate treaty regimes worked relatively well in the context of the Cold War environment between World War II and about 1990. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, however, changed the dynamics of geopolitics and brought changes in the manner in which the nations of the world have dealt with both Antarctica and outer space. Both treaty regimes have clear statements about prohibitions, guidelines, and objectives that have served well for many years. Overall the evolution of policies and law governing these regions has reflected the influence of the science community on the political leadership in concert with geopolitical motivations, replacing what U. M. Bohlmann called “the early hard power arguments to the quest for scientific knowledge perceived as a cultural imperative.”47 Historian Rip Bulkeley offered a uniquely valuable assessment. “Much has changed in the Antarctic Treaty regime since the1960s, thanks to further international agreements and to a transformation in the arrangements under which scientists take part in Antarctic governance.” He asserted that the “question of whether that evolution has preserved or supplanted the status quo, the nexus of international rivalries, claims, resource postulations and other aspirations that prevailed in the early 1950s, is a matter for continuing debate.” The origins and evolution of both of these international treaties are “complex, lengthy, partisan, flukey, vulnerable, and never wholly under the control of those who tried to shape them.”48 In the last twenty years a series of new pressures have arisen. At a fundamental level the IGY, the problem of Antarctica, “freedom of space,” and Sputnik were interrelated and handled in an essentially similar manner. All actions thus far have largely been predicated on the belief that nothing of intrinsic value is present either in Antarctica or in space. Both major legal structures— the “freedom of space” doctrine ensconced in the Outer Space Treaty and the Antarctic Treaty—are fragile instruments at present and under assault from several quarters, especially military and economic interests. In both cases, a question: what would happen should something of worth be found in Antarctica or in space? Accordingly, while the communities overseeing these regions continue to protect and sustain science exploration and discovery through existing treaties and policies, it is obvious that in the future efforts to allow appropriate technological development and expansion of human activities must

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take place. In both cases future activities will require considerable work to ensure success in the future.49

Roger D. Launius is principal of Launius Historical Services. Between 2002 and 2017 he worked in several positions at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, most recently as associate director for Collections and Curatorial Affairs. Between 1990 and 2002 he served as chief historian of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He has written or edited more than thirty books on aerospace history, most recently Historical Analogs for the Stimulation of Space Commerce (NASA, 2014).

Notes 1. Roger D. Launius, James R. Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin, eds., Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 2. R. Cargill Hall, “The Origins of U.S. Space Policy: Eisenhower, Open Skies, and Freedom of Space,” Colloquy 14, no. 3 (December 1993): 5–6, 19–24; R. Cargill Hall, “Origins of U.S. Space Policy: Eisenhower, Open Skies, and Freedom of Space,” in Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, vol. 1, Organizing for Exploration, ed. J. M. Logsdon (Washington, DC: NASA Special Publication 4407, 1995): 213–29. 3. M. J. Peterson, Managing the Frozen South: The Creation and Evolution of the Antarctic Treaty System (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Jeffrey D. Myhre, The Antarctic Treaty System: Politics, Law, and Diplomacy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986); Steven J. Burton, “New Stresses on the Antarctic Treaty: Toward International Legal Institutions Governing Antarctic Resources,” Virginia Law Review 65, no. 3 (April 1979); Paul A. Berkman, “Common Interests in the International Space of Antarctica,” Antarctic Treaty Summit 2009. 4. John R. Dudeney and David W. H. Walton, “Leadership in Politics and Science within the Antarctic Treaty,” Polar Research 31 (2012): 1–9; Paul G. Dembling and Daniel M. Arons, “The Evolution of the Outer Space Treaty,” Journal of Air Law and Commerce 33 (1967); Christopher C. Joyner, “Legal Implications of the Concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 35, no. 1 (January 1986); Burton, “New Stresses on the Antarctic Treaty.” 5. The idealistic position is maintained in Richard S. Lewis, A Continent for Science: The Antarctic Adventure (New York: Viking Press, 1965). A more realpolitik position is offered in Paul A. Berkman, Science into Policy: Global Lessons from Antarctica (San Diego: Academic Press, 2002). 6. General histories of Antarctica are not numerous, and none are authoritative. The only work of substance is Stephen Martin, A History of Antarctica (Sydney: State Library of New South Wales Press, 1996).

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7. Klaus. Dodds, Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2002). 8. Dian O. Belanger, “The International Geophysical Year in Antarctica: A Triumph of ‘Apolitical’ Science, Politics, and Peace,” in Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years, ed. Roger D. Launius, James R. Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 266. 9. Gregory A. Good, “Sydney Chapman: Dynamo Behind the International Geophysical Year,” in Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years, ed. Roger D. Launius, James R. Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 10. On ICSU, see L. Ernster, “ICSU: The First Sixty Years,” Science International, special issue (September 1991). 11. Constance McLaughlin Green and Milton Lomask, Vanguard: A History (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971); Fae L. Korsmo, “The Genesis of the International Geophysical Year,” Physics Today 60, no. 7 (June 2007); Rip Bulkeley, The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography of Space (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991), 89–103; Allan A. Needell, Science, Cold War, and the American State: Lloyd V. Berkner and the Balance of Professional Ideals (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000), 297–323. 12. Lloyd V. Berkner, “International Scientific Action: The International Geophysical Year 1957–58,” Science 119, no. 3096 (30 April 1954): 575. 13. James L. Spiller, “Re-imagining United States Antarctic Research as a Defining Endeavor of a Deserving World Leader, 1957–1991,” Public Understanding of Science 13, no. 1 (January 2004); C. Summerhayes, “International Collaboration in Antarctica: The International Polar Years, the International Geophysical Year, and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research,” Polar Record 44, no. 4 (October 2008); Katrina Dean et al., “Data in Antarctic Science and Politics,” Social Studies of Science 38, no. 4 (August 2008). 14. Solid overviews of the history of space exploration include William E. Burrows, This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age (New York: Random House, 1998); Roger D. Launius, Frontiers of Space Exploration (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998). 15. Walter A. McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985; reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 5–7. 16. This group included Lloyd Berkner, Joseph Kaplan, Fred Singer, James Van Allen, and Homer Newell. The fingerprints of these core leaders are all over every decision relative to the IGY satellite program and the US decision by Eisenhower to sponsor a satellite. See the discussion of this effort in Green and Lomask, Vanguard, 6–39; Bulkeley, The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy, 89–122; R. Cargill Hall, “Origins and Early Development of the Vanguard and Explorer Satellite Programs,” Airpower Historian 9, no. 4 (October 1964). 17. National Security Council, “Draft Statement of Policy on U.S. Scientific Satellite,” 20 May 1955 (Washington, DC: NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office); Technical Panel on Earth Satellite Program, United States National Committee for the International Geophysical Year 1957–1958, “Minutes of the First Meeting,

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18.

19.

20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Technical Panel on Earth Satellite Program,” 20 October 1955 (Washington, DC: NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office); Don Irwin to Mr. Rockefeller and General Parker, “Pentagon Briefing on Earth Satellite Program,” 12 October 1955 (Abilene, KS: Eisenhower Library, White House Office of Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, NS, OCB Central Files, Box 11, OCB 000.9 (National & Physical Sciences)); Richard Hirsch to Elmer B. Staats, “Pentagon Meeting on Earth Satellite Program,” 13 October 1955 (Abilene, KS: Eisenhower Library, White House Office of Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, NS, OCB Central Files, Box 11, OCB 000.9 [National & Physical Sciences]). Percival Brundage to Eisenhower, “United States Scientific Satellite Program,” 8 October 1957 (Abilene, KS: Eisenhower Library, Official File, WHCF, Box 744, Outer Space Box, Earth-Circling Satellite Folder). National Security Council, “Memorandum of Discussion at the 283d Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, May 3, 1956,” in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, United Nations and General International Matters, vol. 11, ed. J. P. Glennon (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1988); National Security Council, “Memorandum of Discussion at the 322nd Meeting of the NSC, May 10, 1957,” in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, United Nations and General International Matters, vol. 11, ed. J. P. Glennon (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1988). Public Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1958), 719. The NRO at the Crossroads: Report of the National Commission for the Review of the National Reconnaissance Office (Washington, DC: National Reconnaissance Office, 1 November 2000), appendix E, 120. Technological Capabilities Panel of the Science Advisory Committee, Report to the President, vol. 2, Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack (Washington, DC: s.n., 14 February 1955), 151. This declassified top secret report can be found in the records of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration for 1952–61 in the Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, NSC Policy Papers, Box 16, Folder NSC 5522, Technological Capabilities Panel, Eisenhower Presidential Library. Howard. Jones, Crucible of Power: A History of American Foreign Relations from 1945 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 80. National Security Council, 5520, “Discussion at the 339th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, October 10, 1957,” 11 October 1957 (Abilene, KS: Eisenhower Library, NSC Series, Box 9, Eisenhower Papers, 1953–61). Laurence McKinley, quoted in Paul A. Berkman, “International Spaces Promote Peace,” Nature 462 (26 November 2009). “The Antarctic Treaty: 50 More Years of Preserving Peace?” Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, UK, 10–12 June 2009. Spiller, “Re-imagining United States Antarctic Research.” American National Security Council, quoted in Berkman, “International Spaces Promote Peace,” 412. John Krige, “The Politics of European Collaboration in Space,” Space Times: Magazine of the American Astronautical Society 36, no. 5 (September–October 1997): 4.

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30. A superb example of this is the effort beginning in 1997 to shift American launch operations to the private sector by contracting out the majority of activities at Kennedy Space Center to the USA Corporation. 31. Francisco O. Vicuna, “Antarctic Conflict and International Cooperation,” in Antarctic Treaty System: An Assessment, Proceedings of a Workshop Held at Beardmore, South Field Camp, Antarctica, January 7–13, 1985 (Washington, DC: National Academies Press 1986). 32. Berkman, “International Spaces Promote Peace,” 412. 33. R. Bulkeley, “The Political Origins of the Antarctic Treaty,” Polar Record 46, no. 1 (January 2010). 34. Paul A. Berkman, “Common Interests in the International Space of Antarctica,” Polar Record 46, no. 1 (January 2010): 7–9. 35. C. Collis and Q. Stevens, “Modern Colonialism in Antarctica: The Coldest Battle of the Cold War,” in Proceedings 7th Australasian Urban History/Planning History Conference, ed. G. Lehman and D. Nichols (Geelong: Deakin University, 2004), 95. 36. “National Security Decision Memorandum 71,” 10 July 1970 (Washington, DC: National Security Council); “National Security Decision Memorandum 318,” 25 February 1976 (Washington, DC: National Security Council); “Presidential Decision Directive NSC-26: U.S. Policy in the Arctic and Antarctic Regions,” 9 June 1994 (Washington, DC: The White House, 1994). 37. This represents a slightly different set of principles from those offered in R. Cargill Hall and Robert Butterworth, Military Space and National Policy: Record and Interpretation (Washington, DC: George C. Marshall Institute, 2006), 20. 38. United Nations Treaties and Principles on Outer Space (Vienna: United Nations, 1999). 39. “Presidential Decision Directive/National Space Policy-8: PDD/NSTC-8,” 19 September 1996 (Washington, DC: The White House, 1996), introduction, sec. 3. 40. Henry Owen to Walt W. Rostow, 9 December 1966, with atch, US State Department, “Space Goals after the Lunar Landing,” October 1966 (Austin, TX: LBJ Library). 41. Margaret S. Race, “Policies for Scientific Exploration and Environmental Protection: Comparison of the Antarctic and Outer Space Treaties,” presentation at Antarctic Treaty Summit, Washington DC, 30 November 2009. 42. United States Congress, Treaty on Outer Space: Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1966). 43. US Delegation Position Paper, “Negotiations with the Soviets on the Legal Problems of Outer Space,” 24 September 1963 (Austin, TX: LBJ Library). 44. W. N. White, Interpreting Article II of the Outer Space Treaty, Fifty-Fourth International Astronautical Congress (Bremen: International Astronautical Federation, 2003). 45. “Space Treaty Called ‘Fuzzy’ at Senate Hearings: Rusk and Goldberg Dispute Unexpected Objections by Gore and Fulbright,” New York Times, 8 March 1967, 20. 46. K. A. Baca, “Property Rights in Outer Space,” Journal of Air Law and Commerce 58 (1993): 1041; A. Wasser, “The Law That Could Make Privately Funded Space Settlement Profitable,” Space Governance—The Journal of the United Societies in Space and the World Space Bar Association 5, no. 1 (January 1998): 56. 47. Ulrike M. Bohlmann, “The Need of a Legal Framework for Space Exploration,” in Humans in Outer Space—Interdisciplinary Odysseys, ed. L. Codignola-Bo, K. U. Schrogl,

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A. Lukaszczyk, and N. Peter (New York: Springer Science & Business Media, 2009), 193. 48. Bulkeley, “The Political Origins of the Antarctic Treaty,” 10. 49. M. S. Race, “Policies for Scientific Exploration and Environmental Protection: Comparison of the Antarctic and Outer Space Treaties,” presentation at Antarctic Treaty Summit, Washington DC, 30 November 2009; J. L. Spiller, Frontiers for the American Century: Outer Space, Antarctica, and Cold War Nationalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Bibliography Baca, K. A. “Property Rights in Outer Space.” Journal of Air Law and Commerce 58 (1993): 1065–69. Belanger, Dian O. “The International Geophysical Year in Antarctica: A Triumph of ‘Apolitical’ Science, Politics, and Peace.” In Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years, edited by Roger D. Launius, James R. Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin, 265–78. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Berkman, Paul A. Science into Policy: Global Lessons from Antarctica. San Diego: Academic Press, 2002. ———. “International Spaces Promote Peace.” Nature 462 (26 November 2009): 412–13. ———. “Common Interests in the International Space of Antarctica.” Antarctic Treaty Summit 2009. Retrieved 21 January 2011 from www.atsummit50.aq/media/journal-6.pdf. ———. “Common Interests in the International Space of Antarctica.” Polar Record 46, no. 1 (January 2010): 7–9. Berkner, Lloyd V. “International Scientific Action: The International Geophysical Year 1957–58.” Science 119, no. 3096 (30 April 1954): 569–75. Bohlmann, Ulrike M. “The Need of a Legal Framework for Space Exploration.” In Humans in Outer Space—Interdisciplinary Odysseys, edited by L. Codignola-Bo, K. U. Schrogl, A. Lukaszczyk, and N. Peter, 182–95. New York: Springer Science & Business Media, 2009. Brundage, Percival, to Eisenhower. “United States Scientific Satellite Program.” 8 October 1957. Abilene, KS: Eisenhower Library, Official File, WHCF, Box 744, Outer Space Box, Earth-Circling Satellite Folder. Bulkeley, Rip. The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography of Space. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. ———. “The Political Origins of the Antarctic Treaty.” Polar Record 46, no. 1 (January 2010): 9–11. Burrows, William E. This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age. New York: Random House, 1998. Burton, Steven J. “New Stresses on the Antarctic Treaty: Toward International Legal Institutions Governing Antarctic Resources.” Virginia Law Review 65, no. 3 (April 1979): 421–512. Collis, C., and Q. Stevens. “Modern Colonialism in Antarctica: The Coldest Battle of the Cold War.” In Proceedings 7th Australasian Urban History/Planning History Conference, edited by G. Lehman and D. Nichols, 72–95. Geelong, Australia: Deakin University, 2004.

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Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, UK. “The Antarctic Treaty: 50 More Years of Preserving Peace?” 10–12 June 2009. Dean, Katrina, Simon Naylor, Simone Turchetti, and Martin Siegert. “Data in Antarctic Science and Politics.” Social Studies of Science 38, no. 4 (August 2008): 571–604. Dembling, Paul G., and Daniel M. Arons. “The Evolution of the Outer Space Treaty.” Journal of Air Law and Commerce 33 (1967): 419–56. Dodds, Klaus. Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2002. Dudeney, John R., and David W. H. Walton. “Leadership in Politics and Science within the Antarctic Treaty.” Polar Research 31 (2012): 1–9. Ernster, L. “ICSU: The First Sixty Years.” Science International, special issue (September 1991): 1–69. Good, Gregory A. “Sydney Chapman: Dynamo Behind the International Geophysical Year.” In Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years, edited by Roger D. Launius, James R. Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin, 177–204. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Green, Constance McLaughlin, and Milton Lomask, Vanguard: A History. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971. Hall, R. C. “Origins and Early Development of the Vanguard and Explorer Satellite Programs.” Airpower Historian 9, no. 4 (October 1964): 102–8. ———. “The Origins of U.S. Space Policy: Eisenhower, Open Skies, and Freedom of Space.” Colloquy 14, no. 3 (December 1993): 5–24. ———. “Origins of U.S. Space Policy: Eisenhower, Open Skies, and Freedom of Space.” In Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, vol. 1, Organizing for Exploration, edited by J. M. Logsdon, 213–29. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA History Office, 1995. Hall, R. Cargill, and Robert Butterworth. Military Space and National Policy: Record and Interpretation. Washington, DC: George C. Marshall Institute, 2006. Hirsch, Richard, to Elmer B. Staats. “Pentagon Meeting on Earth Satellite Program.” 13 October 1955. Abilene, KS: Eisenhower Library, White House Office of Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, NS, OCB Central Files, Box 11, OCB 000.9 (National & Physical Sciences). Irwin, Don, to Mr. Rockefeller and General Parker. “Pentagon Briefing on Earth Satellite Program.” 12 October 1955. Abilene, KS: Eisenhower Library, White House Office of Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, NS, OCB Central Files, Box 11, OCB 000.9 (National & Physical Sciences). Jones, Howard. Crucible of Power: A History of American Foreign Relations from 1945. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009. Joyner, Christopher C. “Legal Implications of the Concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind.” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 35, no. 1 (January 1986): 190–99. Korsmo, Fae L. “The Genesis of the International Geophysical Year.” Physics Today 60, no. 7 (June 2007): 38–43. Krige, John. “The Politics of European Collaboration in Space.” Space Times: Magazine of the American Astronautical Society 36, no. 5 (September–October 1997): 4–9. Launius, Roger D. Frontiers of Space Exploration. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Launius, Roger D., James R. Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin, eds. Globalizing Polar Sci-

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ence: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Lewis, Richard S. A Continent for Science: The Antarctic Adventure. New York: Viking Press, 1965. Martin, Stephen. A History of Antarctica. Sydney: State Library of New South Wales Press, 1996. McDougall, Walter A. The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. New York: Basic Books, 1985; reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Myhre, Jeffrey D. The Antarctic Treaty System: Politics, Law, and Diplomacy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986. National Security Council. “Draft Statement of Policy on U.S. Scientific Satellite.” 20 May 1955. Washington, DC: NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, 1955. ———. “Memorandum of Discussion at the 283d Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, May 3, 1956.” In Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, United Nations and General International Matters, vol. 11, edited by J. P. Glennon, 734–42. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1988. ———. “Memorandum of Discussion at the 322nd Meeting of the NSC, May 10, 1957.” In Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, United Nations and General International Matters, vol. 11, edited by J. P. Glennon, 749. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1988. ———. “Discussion at the 339th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, October 10, 1957.” 11 October 1957. Abilene, KS: Eisenhower Library, NSC Series, Box 9, Eisenhower Papers, 1953-1961. ———. “National Security Decision Memorandum 71.” 10 July 1970. Washington, DC. ———. “National Security Decision Memorandum 318.” 25 February 1976. Washington, DC. Needell, Allan A. Science, Cold War, and the American State: Lloyd V. Berkner and the Balance of Professional Ideals. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000. The NRO at the Crossroads: Report of the National Commission for the Review of the National Reconnaissance Office. Washington, DC: National Reconnaissance Office, 1 November 2000. Owen, Henry, to Walt W. Rostow, 9 December 1966, with atch, US State Department. “Space Goals after the Lunar Landing.” October 1966. Austin, TX: LBJ Library. Peterson, M. J. Managing the Frozen South: The Creation and Evolution of the Antarctic Treaty System. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Public Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1958. Race, Margaret S. “Policies for Scientific Exploration and Environmental Protection: Comparison of the Antarctic and Outer Space Treaties.” Presentation at Antarctic Treaty Summit. Washington, DC: November 30, 2009. “Space Treaty Called ‘Fuzzy’ at Senate Hearings: Rusk and Goldberg Dispute Unexpected Objections by Gore and Fulbright.” New York Times, 8 March 1967. Spiller, James L. “Re-imagining United States Antarctic Research as a Defining Endeavor of a Deserving World Leader, 1957–1991.” Public Understanding of Science 13, no. 1 (January 2004): 31–53.

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———. Frontiers for the American Century: Outer Space, Antarctica, and Cold War Nationalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Summerhayes, C. “International Collaboration in Antarctica: The International Polar Years, the International Geophysical Year, and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.” Polar Record 44, no. 4 (October 2008): 321–34. Technical Panel on Earth Satellite Program, United States National Committee for the International Geophysical Year 1957–1958. “Minutes of the First Meeting, Technical Panel on Earth Satellite Program.” 20 October 1955. Washington, DC: NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office. Technological Capabilities Panel of the Science Advisory Committee, Report to the President, vol. 2. Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack. Washington, DC: s.n., 14 February 1955. United Nations. United Nations Treaties and Principles on Outer Space. Vienna: United Nations, 1999. United States Congress. Treaty on Outer Space: Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1966. US Delegation Position Paper. “Negotiations with the Soviets on the Legal Problems of Outer Space.” 24 September 1963. Austin, TX: LBJ Library. Vicuna, Francisco O. “Antarctic Conflict and International Cooperation.” In Antarctic Treaty System: An Assessment, Proceedings of a Workshop Held at Beardmore, South Field Camp, Antarctica, January 7–13, 1985, 55–64. Washington, DC: National Academies Press 1986. Wasser, A. “The Law That Could Make Privately Funded Space Settlement Profitable.” Space Governance—The Journal of the United Societies in Space and the World Space Bar Association 5, no. 1 (January 1998): 55–57. The White House. “Presidential Decision Directive NSC-26: U.S. Policy in the Arctic and Antarctic Regions.” 9 June 1994. Washington, DC: The White House, 1994. ———. “Presidential Decision Directive/National Space Policy-8: PDD/NSTC-8.” 19 September 1996. Washington, DC: The White House, 1994. White, W. N. Interpreting Article II of the Outer Space Treaty. Fifty-Fourth International Astronautical Congress. Bremen: International Astronautical Federation, 2003.

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CHAPTER 6

An Environment Too Extreme? The Case of Bouvetøya Peder Roberts and Lize-Marié van der Watt

B

ouvetøya is the world’s most remote island. A thousand nautical miles separate its forty-nine square kilometers of rock and ice from the nearest landmass—Antarctica—and the island is almost half that distance again to South Africa. First sighted in 1739, the island has never had a permanent human population (though it does have a population of birds, seals, and nonvascular vegetation), and it is only in the past three decades that even the most basic scientific facilities have been maintained there. Bouvetøya’s physical geography is defined by ice—its landmass is covered almost entirely by glaciers—but to what extent has ice and snow also defined the history of human engagement with the island? Our goal in this chapter is to demonstrate how Bouvetøya has refracted a series of interests, rivalries, and values, an approach for which the island’s lack of population is an aid rather than a hindrance. In this essay we ask how studying the various attempts to derive value from this speck of rock in the Southern Ocean illuminate the interplay between physical geographical conditions and the logistical and political factors that determine whether such value can be realized. At its heart, this is an argument for the importance of ice and snow in framing both the possibilities for and the obstacles to pursuing Antarctic research even at the Cold War height of the “assault on the unknown.”1 Stephen Pyne’s 1986 meditation on the natural and human history of Antarctica has rightly had a profound impact on scholars, thanks to its insistence on “the ice” as an inescapable frame for human action in the region.2 At the same time—as Pyne among many others notes—human action in Antarctic and sub-Antarctic environments has always been driven by motives far further north.3 We argue for an important distinction between the function of ice as a factor in human decision-making and its function as a deterministic force. Our claim is that Bouvetøya’s uniquely challenging physical geography posed high costs to human engagement with the island rather than necessarily providing

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Map 6.1. Bouvet Island (Bouvetøya). Cape Valdivia Cape Circoncision Cape Lollo

Meterorological Station

Olav Peak Cape Meteor

Bouvet Island

Cape Norway

Cape Fie Lars Island

Africa

25

00 k

m

South America

Pr. Edward Is. Bouvet Island

Falkland Islands

1800 km

South Georgia

Antarctica Map: Red Geographics.

Crozet Is.

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an insurmountable obstacle. Ice and snow have not prevented Bouvetøya from being inscribed with meanings from elsewhere, but they have on occasion made the process of inscription a difficult matter. Here we see strong parallels with early Cold War investigations in northern Greenland. Nikolaj Petersen has studied how the United States Army planned a massive medium-range ballistic missile system east of the Thule Air Base—Project Iceworm—and Henry Nielsen and Kristian H. Nielsen have considered how the army used the Camp Century research facility to investigate the properties of ice and snow necessary to making the plan a reality.4 All three scholars have concluded that Iceworm never materialized due to political and economic in addition to physical geographical factors. The ice was an important part, but not the exclusive whole, of a complex Cold War decision-making calculus. The empirical heart of this essay is the enduring tension between the forbidding physical geography of Bouvetøya and its tempting location—in both the seas of the Southern Ocean and the political and scientific imaginations of people far further north. The island’s sudden rise to prominence in early 1928 was intimately related to the collapse of British authority over the Antarctic whaling industry, at the time dominated by Norway.5 As the island’s significance within British-Norwegian whaling disputes declined, it once again slipped from the political map, only to reappear as a “synoptic void” in the map of British imperial and later South African meteorological forecasting. The island came under renewed attention in the lead-up to the International Geophysical Year (IGY, 1957–58), a classic example of Cold War competition, in which the establishment of bases in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic assumed great geopolitical significance and equally great resources. But the necessary combination of political and logistical muscle proved unattainable—at least until Norwegian oil money could purchase the valuable moral capital of participation in the Ecosystem Monitoring Program of the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources starting in 1996.6 Searching for terra australis, the great southern land presumed to exist by necessity as a counterweight to Northern Hemisphere landmasses, the French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier came across the island that eventually assumed his name on 1 January 1739. Bouvet de Lozier apparently thought that the mist-enshrouded promontory he saw was the tip of the sought-after continent, but after waiting in vain for twelve days for the weather to clear, he gave up plans of landing.7 In 1825 a sealing expedition led by the Briton George Norris landed at what he named Liverpool Island, while also naming (but not landing upon) nearby Thompson Island. Both Liverpool Island and Thompson Island subsequently appeared on British nautical maps and became incorporated within the empire, but the relationship between these three names and the pieces of rock they represented became hazy, as subsequent visitors failed to find land at the initially cited coordinates.8

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On 1 December 1927 an expedition sponsored by the Norwegian whaling magnate Lars Christensen landed on what he claimed was Bouvet’s island and raised the Norwegian flag. Christensen’s claim came as tensions between Britain and Norway over Antarctic whaling were running high. Britain had long controlled Antarctic whaling by controlling the territory on which whaling stations were located, an arrangement that admirably suited the exclusive club of concession holders, most of them Norwegian. British sovereignty over Antarctic and sub-Antarctic territory could thus be firmly in the best interests of Norwegian companies. When Christensen announced the Bouvet landing on 15 January 1928, it coincided almost exactly with the British Colonial Office’s announcement that a rival Norwegian whaling entrepreneur—Johan Rasmussen—had been granted an exclusive license for whaling around the island.9 Christensen’s landing and claim of Norwegian sovereignty captured an emerging trend within public opinion that made the hitherto uninteresting island into a “Commercial Gibraltar,” in the words of Christensen’s most active propagandist.10 The phrase captured the idea that a strategically placed rock could attain great significance in safeguarding national interests, even if politicians and public servants saw the matter differently. Benjamin Vogt, the Norwegian minister in London, let British counterparts know that his government was unwilling to bring in international arbitration, the International Court of Justice at The Hague or other “such heavy machinery . . . for settling a dispute of such insignificant practical importance,” but that domestic public opinion meant his government could not back down.11 The ice that dominated Bouvetøya was essentially irrelevant to the island’s function as a symbol of Norwegian resistance to perceived British domination of an important national industry. Britain eventually agreed to relinquish its claims as an “act of grace” aimed at facilitating a broader agreement on regulating Antarctic whaling, a matter that in the pelagic age required state authority to be exercised through jurisdiction over vessels sailing under its flag rather than stations operating from state territory.12 Early in 1930 Norway officially proclaimed Bouvetøya as an overseas dependency.13 Vogt’s skepticism about the island’s practical value proved well-founded. By 1930 it was clear that the value of any scientific data from Bouvetøya was outweighed by the island’s physical geography: the ice sheets, rocky coastlines, and absence of a harbor made landings dangerous and maintaining even a small hut challenging. There was no clamor to study the island for its own sake or to use it as a laboratory for studying ice dynamics more generally. Meteorology was the one activity that could benefit from data collected at Bouvetøya. But even if a meteorological station could be established, the great difficulty (and danger) of such an effort could not be justified by the practical value that would accrue to the whaling industry, whose ships were the only regular

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traffic in the region. Proclaiming sovereignty was sufficient to extract symbolic value from the island, given that no other country was likely to expend the resources needed to occupy such a difficult place. It would take a different political context to produce a different view of the value of meteorological data from Bouvetøya. During the first half of the twentieth century, the Union of South Africa was mostly a passive recipient of polar policy-making from London.14 This was broadly true for science as much as politics, even though particular individuals (such as the geologist A. L. du Toit, an early advocate of Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift) regarded the Antarctic as relevant for understanding South Africa’s geology.15 Another exception was meteorology. From 1912 the Union’s four provincial weather services were integrated into a centralized Union Weather Service, driven in large measure by recognition that adequate forecasting required data from across the country (and beyond). The advent of wireless radio made communicating data easier, both for the compilation of synoptic forecasts and the dissemination of those forecasts to shipping, and in 1932–33 the Weather Service participated in the Second International Polar Year.16 T. E. W. (Theo) Schumann took over as head of the Weather Service in 1933 and immediately set about further building up its capacity at a time when building national technological and economic capacity within the Union was a broader political priority.17 World War II highlighted the value of synoptic meteorology in various parts of the world, including the Arctic.18 Meteorological data from far beyond national shores proved valuable for commerce and military action alike. South African geologists also remained interested in the Antarctic, and in early 1944 they floated plans for an Antarctic expedition in the near future, including to Bouvetøya.19 But the difficulty of living and working on Bouvetøya’s icy shore remained a significant factor. The Australian geologist and Antarctic explorer Sir Douglas Mawson frankly told his fellow geologist Lester King, chairman of the South African Antarctic Research Committee, that it was “a poor sort of place for a year’s occupation.”20 Such objections led to Bouvetøya being excluded as South African plans for Antarctic exploration evolved, although its meteorological significance (and in the eyes of the mining executive Guy Carleton Jones, its potential to attract public interest and sponsorship) led to agreement that the matter should be discussed with “experts.”21 Ultimately financial issues proved decisive. Despite rumors to the contrary, South Africa’s powerful premier Jan Christian Smuts was not committed to Antarctic research.22 The absence of local money led King and his colleagues to propose an international “Polar Year” with other (wealthier) partners, an idea that failed to gain support. The British Foreign Office was very concerned about the potential geopolitical cost of any such an endeavor, arguing that proposals for a Polar Year would be an unwelcome opportunity for others to participate in

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Antarctic affairs.23 Within this context South African wishes for another meteorological data point carried little traction. Even as the Polar Year plans were nipped in the bud, the Geological Society of South Africa asserted in 1946 that in terms of meteorology, Southern Ocean islands such as Bouvetøya, Gough Island, and Tristan da Cunha “were as important, if not more important, than the Antarctic itself.”24 In 1946 the Department of Transport took over the Weather Service—in 1948 renamed the Weather Bureau—a move linked apparently to the growing importance of air travel.25 Schumann’s personal desire for a greater volume and diversity of meteorological observations (from within South Africa and from international networks) dovetailed with growing political recognition of the value of a strong meteorological service. “I have for a long time felt that much more should be done in our Hemisphere to attain a better network of meteorological stations,” Schumann wrote to the Transport Secretary in August 1947 in response to a request for a South African meteorologist to join Britain’s Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS).26 He also pointed out the need to remedy South Africa’s lack of trained meteorologists, reluctantly declining the request due to staff shortages.27 During the coming decade, meteorology would become the chief justification for strategic South African engagement with the sub-Antarctic islands.28 Bouvetøya was in a different category to practically all other sub-Antarctic islands because its difficult physical geography posed a barrier to access that surpassed the value that South Africa—or indeed, any other state—saw in the data that it might provide. Stronger cooperation with Norwegian whaling vessels meant an increase in Southern Ocean weather reports from 1,245 in 1938 to 33,000 in 1958, even without a permanent base at Bouvetøya.29 Despite Carleton Jones’s enthusiasm, there was little reason to believe that an expedition would capture South African public attention. Norway continued to regard the island as a fine thing on paper that incurred no obligation to visit, much less to study. John Giæver, field leader of the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition (NBSX, 1949–52), considered Bouvetøya a worthwhile reserve destination in case ice conditions prevented the expedition from reaching the Antarctic mainland. Drinking water could be obtained using distillation or through chemical processes developed by the Americans during the war, and “even just an overwintering with scientific aims on Bouvet would along with its political importance stand alongside the American, English, and Argentinian overwintering expeditions in the adjacent Falkland Islands sector.”30 But Giæver’s superiors disagreed, and with good cause. The difficulties of establishing a station there stretched far beyond drinking water, and even if it had been possible, both the scientific rationale for the expedition (to determine whether certain glaciers in Queen Maud Land were receding as a result of global warming) and the political rationale (to occupy that territory and pro-

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duce artifacts of authority such as maps) was place-specific. The expedition’s significance for our story would not be through engagement with the island, but rather through the opportunity it gave Schumann to establish a friendly relationship with Harald Ulrik Sverdrup, chief of the Norwegian Polar Institute and overall leader of the NBSX. The most important event in the Antarctic during the 1950s was the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The IGY famously evolved from the geophysicist Sydney Chapman’s declaration at a 1952 dinner party that the time was ripe for a new International Polar Year—one that would involve the entire planet.31 In June 1953 Schumann sounded out Sverdrup about the possibility of establishing a South African station at Bouvetøya for the start of the IGY in 1957.32 Sverdrup responded that Norway had no such plans and reiterated his conviction that the logistical issues would make erecting a station extremely difficult, although the data would doubtless be interesting.33 Pragmatic and methodical by nature, Sverdrup regarded Antarctic research as a complex and expensive matter that set a high bar for the value of research needed to justify its pursuit.34 It was not so much that Antarctic ice and snow could not be overcome, but that the effort of doing so was rarely worthwhile. In addition to Sverdrup’s practical concerns, the Norwegian government was becoming mindful of how little engagement Norway actually had with its distant possession and what impact even a brief settlement by another state might have on its sovereignty. Schumann’s long-standing concern for meteorological data from the Southern Ocean now proved a distinct advantage, as he could assert that his interests were rooted in practical South African concerns rather than any desire for territorial conquest. There was “nothing to suggest . . . political motives behind” the approach—unlike an earlier request by Argentina to establish a meteorological station on Peter I Island, another remote Antarctic island claimed by Norway as the result of Lars Christensen’s interwar expeditions.35 Perhaps the most important factor in swinging Norwegian state opinion toward Schumann’s plans was the new political context provided by the IGY. With so little data hitherto collected from Bouvetøya, and the promise of a global framework for analysis, the Foreign Ministry felt there was almost a “moral obligation” to approve the South African plans.36 Seeing as South Africa had recognized Norwegian sovereignty by seeking permission, Gustav Heiberg at the Foreign Ministry recommended that Norway give a positive response.37 Norway would safeguard its sovereignty by participating in the project (if possible), obtaining copies of all reports, and issuing stern warnings about Norwegian law concerning the protection of fur seals.38 South Africa would invest the considerable effort and capital needed to establish the station, without interfering with Norwegian sovereignty. Norway could gain political prestige through an early pledge of allegiance to the international cooperation that became a defining sentiment during the IGY. Indeed, a resolution from

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an IGY planning meeting in Rome in August 1954 praised the coordination between Norway and South Africa regarding plans for Bouvetøya.39 Notwithstanding these noble words, Halvor Solberg—the distinguished meteorologist who led Norway’s scientific delegation to the IGY planning meetings—soon began to think that for “political reasons” it would be best if Norway set up the Bouvetøya station itself.40 His concern rested on a conviction that the tangible practical benefits (including for future Southern Ocean air routes) would lead South Africa to value the temporary IGY station on Bouvetøya so much that it would become permanent, particularly as it would probably be far superior to its existing Marion Island station, which lay too far to the east. The considerable investment needed to establish the station would no doubt also speak against its abandonment. The pattern of using meteorology as a tool of political engagement with icy territory was well established on Southern Ocean islands and also by FIDS, whose chief Vivian (later Sir Vivian) Fuchs aptly described the Survey’s early work as “politico-scientific” activities.41 However, scientists in Norway had comparatively little interest in pushing Antarctic research,42 and once the Foreign Ministry decreed that there would be a national IGY station in Queen Maud Land, Bouvetøya became a low priority.43 Solberg need not have worried, as Schumann continued to struggle to convince his superiors that the logistical and financial challenges of establishing a Bouvetøya station would be justified by the value of the meteorological data. Brian Roberts of the British Foreign Office reported in November 1954 that Schumann was using his position within the World Meteorological Organization to impress the importance of the island upon the South African government, which pleaded poverty and suggested instead that Britain operate the station for six months.44 Schumann eventually convinced his government to fund a reconnaissance mission to Bouvetøya in early 1955, which he claimed as the first step to improving local forecasting in the Union by filling the “gap” between Tristan da Cunha and Marion Island.45 The party made a successful landing, but it is instructive to note that the Norwegian Foreign Ministry’s copy of a newspaper report on the landing underlined (in red) the sections emphasizing the island’s remoteness and harsh environment, in addition to its value for IGY work.46 The report produced from this voyage provided perhaps the clearest assessment yet of how the island’s ice and snow could be tamed—and how difficult (though not impossible) that process would be.47 Stuart Solomon, an engineer with the South African Department of Transport, identified two possible solutions. The first involved using helicopters to establish a precarious station on a snow slope on the island’s mountainous inland. This solution would have worked with as much as against the ice and snow of the island. Snow would provide a ready supply of drinking water, and the location would avoid the

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most powerful gales, but the comparatively high altitude would undermine the station’s meteorological value, while the mountainside would make wireless transmission more difficult. And as Solomon noted, while the snow slope would mean “more space to exercise,” this benefit was mitigated by the possibility that staff “might fall down a crevasse.” A second option was to use explosives to “bench out” around three thousand yards of rock and create a flat space near Cape Circoncision, the best-mapped part of the island. This would avoid the ice and snow that characterized the island through a substantial reconfiguration of one of its few non-icy spots. This location had the advantage of being better for meteorological work, while avoiding the icy inland and enjoying proximity to the only feature that approximated a harbor. On the other hand, blasting out that amount of rock would probably take thirty days, and the finer details of performing that dangerous work in such a harsh environment were left hazy. Nor was there much consideration for the penguins whose rookeries currently occupied the area. “The penguins are going to be very much disturbed by this station, to put it mildly,” Solomon wrote, “but the area required for the station will be only about 10 percent of the total area of rookery and the penguins will return in due course, no doubt.” Both options were expensive—£45,000 and £71,000 respectively—in addition to being difficult and potentially dangerous. Solomon recommended the second plan as the preferred option but insisted upon a visit during winter to see conditions at their worst before making any firm decisions.48 The South African Navy was keen to help take on the challenge, fired by a feeling that “the spirit of adventure in the Union was not dead.”49 But there were difficulties obtaining a ship, and in September 1955 South Africa told CSAGI (the IGY Antarctic planning body) that its plans were shelved. A plan for an international station promptly surfaced, but when Sverdrup was asked to pass on a formal request to this effect to his government, he did so with the blunt comment that the chances of a station actually being built were “very small.”50 South Africa soon switched its focus to the far less challenging Gough Island, the physical geography of which is characterized by rain rather than snow, where a Cambridge University expedition had already landed a Weather Bureau employee, J. J. van der Merwe.51 Interest in Bouvetøya remained, as evidenced by the production of a bilingual English-Afrikaans map of the island in 1956 that the bureau was keen to show off at the IGY planning meetings.52 But when M. P. van Rooy—who took over from Schumann as chief of the Weather Bureau in 1957—published a textbook on Antarctic meteorology in that year, the most prominent mention of Bouvetøya was a set of photographs with captions bemoaning the lack of a station at such a desirable location.53 The proposal for an international IGY station at Bouvetøya pointed to a wider trend of inscribing Cold War political dynamics upon the Antarctic. The Norwegian government evinced comparatively little fear of Soviet occupation

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due to Bouvetøya’s harsh environment, although it felt obligated to maintain its Queen Maud Land station to forestall Soviet dominance. But when talk of a Soviet expedition to Bouvetøya surfaced at the August 1956 CSAGI meeting, a British Foreign Office observer thought the prospect “may frighten the South African Government.”54 This position was based on a broader feeling in the British Foreign Office that South African interest in the Antarctic at this time was motivated in part by “the increasing preoccupation of the defence authorities with possible threats from that direction.”55 South African officials around this time indeed regarded Antarctica as a potential base from which foreign threats could be launched.56 The South African delegate to the August 1956 meeting, W. L. Hofmeyr of the Weather Bureau, described the USSR to Schumann as an “unwanted element,” but he did not play up the threat and instead prioritized the overall goal of establishing a meteorological station on Bouvetøya.57 Along with Sverdrup and the Soviet delegate Vasiliy Burkhanov, Hofmeyr developed a joint resolution calling for the establishment of a station, by international means if need be. This position was consistent with Schumann’s position that the meteorological data from Bouvetøya was a valuable commodity in its own right—one more valuable than the security to be gained from denying any other nation a presence there. Although Sverdrup remained doubtful that anything would actually happen,58 upon returning to Norway he sent Burkhanov an enthusiastic note with more details on Bouvetøya,59 and when his Soviet counterpart offered help, Sverdrup asked whether the Soviet vessel Lena could make a reconnaissance visit.60 Ultimately these discussions bore no more fruit than any of South Africa’s earlier attempts. In May 1957 the USSR informed South Africa it was not interested in setting up a station, though it might help Norway with logistics and/or a preliminary survey.61 Norway sponsored a visit of its own, but only as an incidental addition to the relief of its Queen Maud Land station in the 1958–59 season, and although the United States made an aerial reconnaissance of the island in 1958, there is no evidence that it considered establishing a station either. The reason was lack of will rather than lack of capacity. As the United States established a permanent station at geographic South Pole, and the Soviet Union erected a temporary base at the Pole of Relative Inaccessibility, the logistical strength of the superpowers relative to the ice and snow of the Antarctic became clear. Occupying Bouvetøya would not produce the same levels of political prestige. In October 1958 the South African National Committee for Antarctic Research (SANCAR) told its Norwegian counterpart that Bouvetøya remained a priority, even as the South African government sought a more permanent presence on the Antarctic continent itself.62 The statement was not accompanied by any indication that the resources necessary for occupying Bouvetøya would be made available. But beneath this level of diplomatic interaction, at-

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tempts to get to the island continued, albeit at the level of interested individuals who on occasion acted as irritants rather than instruments of statecraft. The most unlikely figure in this story was the Italian polar enthusiast Silvio Zavatti, who sought Norwegian permission for an expedition to Bouvetøya in 1958, seeing it as an opportunity to make a novel contribution to Antarctic exploration. The Norwegian Polar Institute, which knew Zavatti from earlier correspondence over various items of polar history, doubted his ability to safely pull off an expedition and replied that the logistical difficulties were insuperable.63 Inquiries through the Norwegian Embassy in Rome revealed that despite holding the grand title of founding head of the Polar Geographical Institute, Zavatti was a schoolteacher with minimal polar experience whose efforts were unlikely to come to fruition.64 The Italian Foreign Ministry told the Norwegian Embassy that they were aware of Zavatti’s plans but did not know much about him and his institute, beyond that their planned venture would not receive state support. Nor did the American Embassy in Rome know anything.65 Still uncertain about Zavatti’s motivation, but convinced that territorial claims were not among them, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry (without any enthusiasm) authorized him to visit and—if possible—set up a meteorological station.66 Zavatti and his colleague Giorgio Constanzo Beccaria eventually reached South Africa in early 1959 but failed to report to the Norwegian Consulate in Cape Town, as they had promised to do.67 After the South African immigration authorities eventually tracked Beccaria down in April, he informed the Norwegian Consulate that Zavatti had already returned to Italy, but that they had undertaken a reconnaissance trip to Bouvet aboard a boat belonging to a British whaling company in early March, spending about six hours near the island. Beccaria claimed they had kept the trip secret because he had not informed the South African immigration authorities of his visit. The two men would return in October with gear for a full excursion, including a beehive-like house that Beccaria thought solid enough to survive an overwintering. The Norwegian consul doubted the claim and noted that the whaling company in question had denied having contact with the two men, although this could be put down to their not wanting to admit to circumventing immigration rules by taking unregistered passengers.68 Zavatti and Beccaria continued to be taken sufficiently seriously for the Norwegian Polar Institute and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry to request that Zavatti be sent updated photographs of Bouvetøya that revealed potential landing sites in greater detail.69 The South African meteorologist and sub-Antarctic expert Allan Crawford, a veteran of the 1955 Bouvetøya landing, apparently became involved with the Italians when Beccaria contacted him in May 1959 about transport to Bouvetøya for the coming season. Crawford later wrote that he was unaware of their claim to have already visited the island—believing that they were in

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South Africa solely to arrange logistics for a future expedition—and an enthusiastic report that he wrote in June 1959 on the Italian plans makes no mention of the trip either.70 When reports emerged of their alleged visit, Crawford became suspicious, and in his memoirs he asserted that records from Cape Town proved that the ship the men claimed to have sailed to Bouvetøya on was in dock at the time.71 His involvement with the Italians fit a wider pattern. As the port meteorological officer at Cape Town, Crawford came in contact with a wide range of Antarctic visitors, who became sources of intelligence and potential support for a potential station at Bouvetøya. When the United States made a brief aerial reconnaissance of Bouvetøya during one of its IGY cruises, revealing newly created open ground near sea level (thought to be from a recent volcanic event), it was Crawford rather than the American authorities who brought the photographs to Norway’s attention.72 Even when it became apparent that the Italians could not launch an expedition on their own, Crawford contacted a Belgian colleague to inquire—strictly in a private capacity—if the Belgians would be open to cooperation with Italy. This would address his personal conviction that “the biggest tragedy of the I.G.Y. in the Southern Hemisphere has been ‘Unoccupied Bouvet Island’” and potentially provide useful data for Belgium’s Antarctic station, providing both a powerful symbolic gesture and a contribution to meteorology.73 Upon receiving an encouraging response, Crawford rejoiced that “the difficulties of landing, together with economic, political and other reasons, [which have] . . . been successful in baffling the I.G.Y.” might soon be overcome.74 Cooperation with either the Italians or Belgians (or both) was a way to achieve South African meteorological goals for a minimal financial outlay, particularly as the South African Navy’s enthusiasm apparently only ran to collecting rather than landing the expedition. Crawford duly contacted the Italians, although recognizing it would take “some careful diplomacy” to craft a multinational expedition.75 Crawford’s concerns were well-founded. The series of visits during the 1950s had greatly increased knowledge of the island’s physical geography, and as the Solomon report suggested, erecting a station amid the ice and snow would be a matter of dealing with difficult and expensive but foreseeable challenges. An international expedition could, however, also be viewed as a threat to the regional geopolitical order. In March 1959 the US State Department told Norway that it feared Zavatti’s expedition might be a prelude to an Italian Antarctic claim (something the Norwegian Foreign Ministry thought highly unlikely, given that the Italian state had given Zavatti no support).76 The following month the US consul in Cape Town visited his Norwegian counterpart to inquire about Zavatti’s plans,77 his puzzlement heightened by the rumors of Belgian and South African involvement.78 There were also fears within South Africa. As the Afrikaner-dominated National Party government positioned communism and Black African nation-

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alism as twin threats that could unite to destroy the white-dominated state, the Antarctic increasingly became a matter for the South African Department of External Affairs, with the Department of Transport (and the Department of Defense) largely restricted to logistics and personnel.79 Whereas they had been relaxed about the Soviet presence three years earlier, South African policy-makers now feared that another state might set up a threatening station at Bouvet under the cloak of science80—a reflection of government paranoia over “encirclement” from north and south, exaggerated perhaps by the relative strength of the Communist Party in Italy.81 When word of Crawford’s freelance negotiating spread to his superiors in the Weather Bureau, he felt forced to defend his actions as a private attempt to reach a useful outcome.82 Van Rooy told External Affairs at the end of August 1959 that the Italian plans were off,83 and because Bouvetøya was Norwegian territory, negotiations with Belgium would have to wait until definite Norwegian approval was secured for a wholly new venture. At the Washington Conference in October 1959—the meeting that produced the Antarctic Treaty—South African diplomats quietly sought intelligence about Soviet designs on Bouvetøya.84 The sudden decision by the South African government to take over Norway’s Antarctic base in late 1959 led the cabinet to approve a reconnaissance mission to Bouvetøya (which Crawford would participate in). Press releases pumped the island’s “inestimable” value for meteorology.85 But the status of Bouvetøya remained a poorly understood afterthought in the public mind: one newspaper enthused about the coming expedition, while declaring the island to be under French sovereignty.86 Cold War superpower science built bases across the Antarctic, sent humans to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in January 1960, and eventually landed twelve men on the moon. But as the IGY concluded, Bouvetøya remained unoccupied. The benefits were outweighed by the considerable—but by no means insurmountable—costs that establishing a presence entailed. Even for South Africa, the one state that possessed a solid and enduring reason to value data from the island, the barriers to working on Bouvetøya were not worth overcoming. There is an instructive contrast with Gough Island, another site with value for South African forecasting, but where the logistics were sufficiently manageable to remain under South African control—even allowing South Africa to aid Britain with transport and thus “compensate in some small measure” for the state’s meager capacity to host international scientific events.87 After 1960 the Antarctic Treaty codified the role of the superpowers in the Antarctic and made it possible for Norway to scale back its commitments and offload its Queen Maud Land station to South Africa.88 The South African High Commission in London was again relaying messages to the Norwegian embassy about reconnaissance expeditions in 1962, and in 1964 word of British plans for a geological survey on Bouvetøya prompted South Africa to yet

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again stress the importance of a meteorological station, while simultaneously admitting that someone else would need to provide the logistical muscle.89 The South African government sponsored another visit to the island again in 1964, where Crawford and his colleagues found evidence of recent volcanism. He later described being convinced after the visit that “a permanently manned station could only be established by a major power with extensive back-up.”90 A further visit in 1966 reinforced that impression and finally ended discussions in South Africa.

Conclusion For ten years from 1996 Bouvetøya hosted a rudimentary housing structure— a 36-square-meter container—until satellite images in 2007 showed it had disappeared (fortunately it was uninhabited at the time).91 But early twentyfirst-century Norwegians have shown a stronger political will to conquer the ice and snow of Bouvetøya than their counterparts fifty years prior. In 2014 the Norwegian Polar Institute established a summer station on the island, revealingly named Norvegia, after Lars Christensen’s most famous expedition ship. The station is a legacy of Norway finally having “tamed” the island, fulfilling Allan Crawford’s dream that enough logistical force would be applied to overcome the physical geographical obstacles.92 On its website the institute describes at length the engineering behind Norvegia, from its sturdiness, selfsufficiency in energy and automated data collection capabilities, to its provision of a comfortable abode for human researchers. It is also makes clear that Bouvetøya is irrefutably Norwegian.93 But the contest between physical geography and political will continues. The island is still visited irregularly, mostly by Norwegian and South African biologists participating in monitoring activities during summer months without overwintering taking place, their presence clearly temporary, though recurring.94 The ice and snow of Bouvetøya might thus be regarded as equally important in terms of cultural as well as physical geography. Much like the Antarctic continent itself, Bouvetøya’s ice- and snow-dominated physical geography has been reinterpreted as an environment that is not simply unsuited to permanent human settlement in a practical sense, but also in a moral sense. Automatic weather recording technology has made it possible to avoid the logistical complications of keeping humans on the island year-round. In 1955 Stuart Solomon described the potential damage to the Bouvet penguin colonies in almost jovial terms. Today those penguins—and other forms of wildlife—are the primary reason why the island is regarded as needing investigation and administration.95 Seals, penguins, and the island’s other seabirds now provide

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Norwegians and South Africans with an opportunity to demonstrate their adherence to progressive norms in the Antarctic. At the same time, the most visible depiction of Bouvetøya in popular culture in recent years has involved neither science nor conservation. The makers of the 2005 film Alien vs. Predator used artistic license to portray the island as comparatively hospitable—enough to have once hosted a whaling station, at least—while also being quintessentially remote (alien, even). The same remoteness has long made Bouvetøya emblematically isolated. In 1957 Harald Ulrik Sverdrup received a letter addressed to the “Bouvet Island Chamber of Commerce” from an American wishing to “enjoy the peace and quiet and the silent surroundings of a peaceful, and beautiful out of the way place such as yours. . . . I have picked your Island as it seems to me that it is quite alone and untouched by any form of civilized life.”96 (Sverdrup replied patiently that it was unfortunately not possible to visit.) From the 1960s amateur radio operators were lured by the chance of making contact from such a remote location. The desolate loneliness of the island also takes center stage in the 2011 award-winning long-form blog post by historian Mike Dash. The post focused on the mystery of how a still-seaworthy lifeboat found on the island during the 1964 South African reconnaissance expedition made it to this “most forbidden” and “appallingly isolated” island. It inspired a number of commentators to do their own research97 and has received almost three hundred thousand hits, although interest has declined since a credible and rather mundane explanation of the mystery was found by commentator-sleuths.98 We find it important to finish by affirming the link between even the most inhospitable and challenging environments and the calculations of value that humans make to determine whether visiting, let alone settling, those places is a worthwhile activity. The history of attempts to investigate and interrogate Bouvetøya reveals the interplay of factors from Great Power and superpower diplomacy to quixotic individual fascination, the island a source of meteorological data but also personal and professional pride. Ice and snow have reflective qualities in a historical as well as a physical sense.

Peder Roberts is docent and researcher at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He is the author of The European Antarctic: Science and Strategy in Scandinavia and the British Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and numerous articles and book chapters on the history and politics of science in the polar regions and the oceans. He is currently leader of the European Research Council project Greening the Poles: Science, the Environment, and the Making of the Modern Arctic and Antarctic.

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Lize-Marié Van Der Watt is a researcher at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. A socio-environmental historian by training, she has published research on Antarctic and Arctic history as well as the global context of contemporary environmental and political change in the polar regions. She is leading a Swedish Research Council–funded project on cultural heritage in Antarctica and takes an active interest in research policy work.

Notes 1. This phrase is taken from the title of the journalist Walter Sullivan’s account of the International Geophysical Year in Antarctica. Walter Sullivan, Assault on the Unknown: The International Geophysical Year (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961). See also Christy Collis and Klaus Dodds, “Assault on the Unknown: The Historical and Political Geographies of the International Geophysical Year (1957–8),” Journal of Historical Geography 34, no. 4 (2008). 2. Stephen J. Pyne, The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986). 3. Klaus Dodds, “Putting Maps in Their Place: The Demise of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey and the Mapping of Antarctica, 1945–1962,” Ecumene 7, no. 2 (April 2000); Klaus Dodds, Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2002); Adrian Howkins, “Frozen Empires: A History of the Antarctic Sovereignty Dispute Between Britain Argentina, and Chile, 1939–1959” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2008); Adrian Howkins, “Defending Polar Empire: Opposition to India’s Proposal to Raise the ‘Antarctic Question’ at the United Nations in 1956,” Polar Record 44 (2008). 4. Nikolaj Petersen, “The Iceman That Never Came: ‘Project Iceworm,’ The Search for a NATO Deterrent, and Denmark, 1960–62,” Scandinavian Journal of History 33, no. 1 (2008); Henry Nielsen and Kristian H. Nielsen, “Camp Century—Cold War City Under the Ice,” in Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice, ed. Ronald E. Doel, Kristine C. Harper, and Matthias Heymann (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 5. Peder Roberts, The European Antarctic: Science and Strategy in Scandinavia and the British Empire (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 42–43. 6. Onno Huyser, “Bouvetøya (Bouvet Island),” in Important Bird Areas in Africa and Associated Islands: Priority Sites for Conservation, ed. Lincoln D. C. Fishpool and Michael I. Evans (Cambridge: Pisces Publications and BirdLife International, 2001), 114. 7. William Mills, “Bouvet de Lozier, Jean,” in Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia, vol. 1, A–L, ed. William Mills (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003), 96. 8. Carl Chun, Aus den Tiefen des Weltmeeres: Schilderungen von der Deutschen TiefseeExpedition (Jena: Fischer, 1903), 193. 9. Roberts, The European Antarctic, 58–59. 10. Bjarne Aagaard, “Den norske hvalfangst i Sydishavet,” Sandefjords Blad, 27 April 1929. Privately Christensen’s attitude seems to have been more pragmatic: Christensen said he would have agreed to British sovereignty if whaling rights around Bouvet were

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11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

shared equally between established companies. Johan Hjort, “Handwritten personal notes on trip to London for whaling negotiations,” 21 April 1928 (National Library of Norway (hereafter NB), MS 4˚ 2911, packet “uregistrerte brev 1924–29 Diverse”). Benjamin Vogt, quoted in Francis Lindley (British Minister, Oslo) to Sir Austen Chamberlain (Foreign Secretary), March 12, 1928 (National Archives of South Africa (hereafter NASA), 136.GG 1342-37-1170). Leo Amery (Colonial and Dominions Secretary), telegram to Sir Charles Fergusson, Governor General, New Zealand, November 16, 1928 (NASA, 136.GG 1342-37-1170). Norwegian Foreign Ministry, “St. med. nr 14: Om Norges anneksjon av Bouvet-øya,” January 18, 1929. Klaus Dodds, “South Africa and the Antarctic 1920–1960,” Polar Record 32 (1996): 25–42; Lize-Marié van der Watt and Sandra Swart, “Falling Off the Map: South Africa, Antarctica and Empire c. 1919–59,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 43, no. 2 (2015). Alexander L. du Toit, Our Wandering Continents: An Hypothesis of Continental Drifting (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1937); Lize-Marié van der Watt, “Return to Gondwanaland: South Africa, Antarctica, Minerals and Apartheid,” Polar Journal 3, no. 1 (2013). See, for instance, Union of South Africa Weather Bureau, News Letter Centenary Edition—1860–1960 (Pretoria: South Africa Weather Bureau, 1960), 33. Saul Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility and White South Africa 1820–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 203–6. See, for instance, Sverre Petterssen, Weathering the Storm: Sverre Petterssen, the D Day Forecast, and the Rise of Modern Meteorology, ed. James R. Fleming (Boston: American Meteorological Society, 2001); Kristine Harper, Weather by the Numbers: The Genesis of Modern Meteorology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). On the Arctic in particular, see Ronald E. Doel et al., “Strategic Arctic Science: National Interests in Building Natural Knowledge—Interwar Era through the Cold War,” Journal of Historical Geography 44 (2014). L. C. King, “Proposed South African Antarctic Research Expedition to the Weddell Sea,” 4 April 1944 (Copy in NASA, 122.DWB 122 154 M18-8). Mawson to Lester King, 27 June 1945 (Mawson Collection, Mawson Centre, South Australian Museum [hereafter MC], 19 DM). Geological Society of South Africa, “South African Antarctic Research Committee meeting minutes,” 19 November 1945 (NASA, 122.DWB 122 154 M18-8). See, in particular, Norman Howell, “Union Plans Quest to Antarctic: Smuts May Give State Assistance to Noted Scientists’ Project,” Sunday Express, 30 September 1945. Smuts was described as thinking proposal for a South African Expedition as “somewhat premature” in Polar Committee, “second Polar Committee meeting minutes,” 14 November 1945 (National Archives of the United Kingdom: Public Record Office [hereafter TNA], Dominions Office [hereafter DO], 35/1171 W 146/4). The Empire Directors of Meteorological Services also discussed organizing an International Polar Year in the Antarctic, but the Foreign Office and the Polar Committee raised similar concerns about the potential for drawing unwanted attention to the Antarctic from the United States, Argentina, Chile (as challengers to British sovereignty in the Antarctic), and the USSR (whose intentions were distrusted in general). Cor-

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24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

35.

36. 37.

38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

respondence relating to the South African proposal as well as the discussions at the 1946 Conference of Empire Meteorologists can be found in Conference of Empire Meteorologists, “Conference of Empire Meteorologists, 1946,” May 1946 (TNA, DO, 35/1171 W120/1). Geological Society of South Africa, “South African Antarctic Research Committee meeting minutes,” 13 September 1946 (NASA, 122.DWB 122 154 M18-8). Union of South Africa Weather Bureau, News Letter Centenary Edition, 37. Schumann to Secretary, South African Antarctic Research Committee, 31 October 1946 NASA, 122.DWB 122 154 M18-8). Schumann to Transport Secretary, 1 August 1947 (NASA, 122.DWB 122 154 M18-8). Most notably, a South African party established a base on Marion Island in 1948 under cloak-and-dagger secrecy. The island’s sovereignty was more difficult than its terrain—although one seaman drowned during the establishment of the station. See, for instance, John H. Marsh, No Pathway Here (Cape Town: H. B. Timmins, 1948); Lance van Sittert, “‘Ironman’: Joseph Daniels and the White History of South Africa’s Deep South,” Polar Record 51, no. 5 (September 2015). Union of South Africa Weather Bureau, News Letter Centenary Edition, 41. John Giæver, “Ekspedisjonen til Antarktis 1948-50,” 17 September 1947 (State Archive of Norway in Tromsø [hereafter SATø], A 013 3/6 Box 194, Folder 10B/1). See Roger Launius, James Fleming, and David DeVorkin, “Rise of Global Scientific Inquiry in the International Polar and Geophysical Years,” in Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years, ed. R. Launius, J. Fleming, and D. DeVorkin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Schumann to Sverdrup, 14 July 1953 (SATø, Box 194, Folder 10). Sverdrup to Schumann, 8 August 1953 (SATø, Box 194, Folder 10). The best study of Sverdrup is Robert M. Friedman, The Expeditions of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup: Contexts for Shaping an Ocean Science (San Diego: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 1994); see also Roberts, The European Antarctic, 117–50. Gustav Heiberg, “Sör-afrikansk meteorologisk stasjon på Bouvetöya,” 9 May 1954 (National Archives of Norway [Riksarkivet, hereafter RA], RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2215 36.15/6). Ibid. This was perhaps motivated also by Halvor Solberg’s suspicion that Australia might be planning an IGY station on Bouvet too. Halvor Solberg to Foreign Ministry, 4 June 1954 (RA, RA/S-2309/D/Da/L0373/0003 folder “Meteorologiske institusjoner. Det internasjon. geofysiske år 57/58 (Antarktisk-ekspedisjon) 1954–59”). Norwegian General Consul (South Africa), “Note by Norwegian General Consul,” 8 June 1954 (SATø, Box 227, Folder 254j). CSAGI, “Report of the Rome Meeting of the CSAGI Sep 1954. Appendix A, Report on Working Group on Geographical Aspects,” September 1954 (a copy is held in the archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute [hereafter SPRI], MS 1308/51/1). Halvor Solberg to Foreign Ministry, 9 November 1954 (RA, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2186). Vivian Fuchs, Of Ice and Men: The Story of the British Antarctic Survey 1943–73 (Oswestry: Anthony Nelson, 1982), 11. Solberg to Foreign Ministry, November 9, 1954; see also Robert M. Friedman, “Å spise

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43.

44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

kirsebær med de store,” in Norsk polarhistorie, vol. 2, Vitenskapene, ed. Einar-Arne Drivenes and Harald Dag Jølle (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2004), 372–82. A copy of the bill presented to the Norwegian Parliament (Storting) for initial expenditure on IGY activity in the Antarctic is held in RA/S-2309/D/Da/L0373/0003. Kulturavd. 674.1 1954–72. TNA, FO, 371/108768 A 15215/20. On the career of this fascinating man, see H. G. R. King and Ann Savours, eds., Polar Pundit: Reminiscences about Brian Birley Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). See, for example, Schumann’s quotation in “An Expedition to Bouvet Island,” Times, 1 March 1955. “Sydafrikansk ekspedisjon besøkte nylig Bouvet-øen,” Aftenposten, 15 July 1955. A marked-up copy is held in RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2215 36.15/7. Stuart Solomon (Design Engineer, Department of Transport), “Preliminary Report on Bouvet Island Base Locations,” 24 February 1955 (a copy is held in RA, 36.15/7). Ibid. Commodore H. H. Biermann (Naval and Marine Chief of Staff ), “Minutes of meeting to discuss Bouvet Island reconnaissance expedition,” 25 February 1955 (NASA, 113 DWB 110 M11-6-1-7). Sverdrup to Foreign Ministry, 28 February 1956 (RA, 36.15/7). On the Gough Island station and the conduct of the Cambridge expedition, see the correspondence held in NASA, 175.DWB 122 M12-10-3-1. Weather Bureau Pretoria to Weather Bureau D.F. Malan, 7 July 1956 (NASA, 113 DWB 110 M11-6-1-7). M. P. van Rooy, ed., Meteorology of the Antarctic (Pretoria: Weather Bureau, Department of Transport, 1957). The plates of Bouvet Island follow page xi. I. F. S. Vincent to Morgan Man (Foreign Office American Department), 3 August 1956 (SPRI, MS 1308/51/1 A 1529/16). I. F. S. Vincent, “Note,” 6 February 1956 (TNA, FO, 371 119817). Peder Roberts, Klaus Dodds, and Lize-Marié van der Watt, “‘But Why Do You Go There?’ Norway and South Africa in the Antarctic during the 1950s,” in Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region: Norden beyond Borders, ed. Sverker Sörlin (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2013). Hofmeyr to Schumann, 6 August 1956 (NASA, 113 DWB 110 M11-6-1-7). Leif Castberg (Foreign Ministry), “Memorandum,” 9 August 1956 (RA, 36.2/4). Sverdrup to Burkhanov, 25 August 1956 (SATø, NP Box 212, Folder 96). Sverdrup to Burkhanov, 19 October 1956 (SATø, NP Box 212, Folder 96). C. F. G. von Hirschberg (South Africa House) to G. J. Price-Jones (Commonwealth Relations Office), 3 May 1957 (SPRI, MS 1308/51/1 A 15234/1). M. P. van Rooy to Leiv Harang, early October 1958 (RA, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2217 36.15/11). Anders Orvin (Head, Norwegian Polar Institute) to Silvio Zavatti, 8 December 1958 (RA, 36.15/7). Knut Myhre (Norwegian Embassy, Rome) to Foreign Ministry, 12 April 1958 (RA, 36.15/7). Knut Myhre to Foreign Ministry, 14 January 1959 (RA, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2216).

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66. Gustav Heiberg (Foreign Ministry) to Norwegian Embassy, Rome, 16 January 1959 (RA, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2216). 67. H.C. Boehlke (Foreign Ministry) to Norwegian Consulate, Cape Town, 19 March 1959 (RA, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2216). 68. Norwegian Consulate, Cape Town, to Foreign Ministry, 2 May 1959 (RA, RA/S-2259/ Dzb/L2216). 69. Anders Orvin to Foreign Ministry, 30 June 1959 (RA, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2216); H. C. Boehlke to Norwegian Embassy, Rome, 3 July 1959 (RA, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2216). 70. The report was included in Erik Colban to Foreign Ministry, 11 July 1959 (RA, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2216). 71. Allan B. Crawford, Tristan da Cunha and the Roaring Forties (Edinburgh: Charles Skilton, 1982), 176. Crawford also recounted Beccaria telling him over coffee in Rome in 1960 that Zavatti had invented the “pilot visit . . . so that the Government would feel it was financing a viable project.” Ibid., 174. 72. Norwegian Consulate, Cape Town, to Foreign Ministry, 30 January 1959 (RA, RA/ S-2259/Dzb/L2216). 73. Allan B. Crawford to Xavier Maere, 15 May 1959 (NASA, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2[1]). 74. Allan B. Crawford to Major M. Verbruggen, 26 May 1959 (NASA, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2[1]). 75. Allan B. Crawford to Verbruggen, 9 June 1959 (NASA 85.BTS 102-2-7-2[1]). 76. H. C. Boehlke, “Foreign Ministry memorandum. Amerikansk forespörsel om den planlagte italienske ekspedisjon til Bouvet-öya,” 18 March 1959 (RA, RA/S-2259/Dzb/ L2216). 77. Norwegian Consulate, Cape Town, to Foreign Ministry, 2 May 1959. 78. P. Nævdal, “Foreign Ministry memorandum. Amerikansk henvendelse i anledning den planlagte italienske ekspedisjon til Bouvet-öy,” 2 October 1959 (RA, RA/S-2259/ Dzb/L2216). 79. This—along with the fact he was now primarily occupied with the South African Atomic Energy Board—was cited in August 1959 as a reason not to worry about keeping Schumann in the loop on further discussions, although he did remain involved with South African Antarctic policy-making. Department of External Affairs, “Note,” 26 August 1959 (NASA, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2[1]). 80. Secret Department of External Affairs, “Memorandum on South African participation in Antarctic operations,” 26 June 1959 (NASA, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2[1]). 81. On South Africa’s Antarctic policies more generally at this time, see Dodds, “South Africa and the Antarctic 1920–1960”; Roberts, Dodds, and van der Watt, “‘But Why Do You Go There?” The term “encirclement” was used in a cabinet briefing for External Affairs Minister Eric Louw, circulated in August 1959 and held in NASA, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2(1). 82. Allan B. Crawford to M. P. van Rooy, 11 July 1959 (NASA, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2[1]). 83. Illegible, to Mr. Killen, 24 August 1959 (NASA, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2[1]). The communication from van Rooy was noted by hand on the first page of this document, dated 31 August 1959. 84. South African Embassy, Washington DC, to Department of External Affairs, 5 November 1959 (NASA, 86.BTS 102-7-2-1[2]). 85. “Press release telegram,” 2 December 1959. (NASA, 86.BTS 102-7-2-1[2]).

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86. “Destination a Secret: S.A. Plans First Antarctic Trip,” Pretoria News, 3 October 1959. 87. J. G. Stewart (Secretary, Department of External Affairs) to Department of Transport, March 31, 1960 (NASA, 77.BTS 102-2-6[2]). 88. Friedman, “Å spise kirsebær med de store.” 89. See the correspondence in NASA, 12.BLO 288 PS16-4(2). 90. Crawford, Tristan da Cunha and the Roaring Forties, 184. 91. Patrick Jaklin, “Norsk feltstasjon tatt av naturkreftene ved Antarktis,” Norsk Polarinstitutt, 20 July 2010. 92. Crawford, Tristan da Cunha and the Roaring Forties, 185. 93. Elin Vinje Jenssen, “Bouvetøya—85 år under norsk styre,” Norsk Polarinstitutt, 19 December 2012; Elin Vinje Jenssen, “Ny feltstasjon på plass på Bouvetøya,” Norsk Polarinstitutt, 10 February 2014; Elin Vinje Jenssen, “Forskere på vei til Bouvetøya,” Norsk Polarinstitutt, 12 December 2014. 94. See, for instance, Huyser, “Bouvetøya (Bouvet Island),” 113–15. 95. The Norwegian state has legislated the protection for decades (thus demonstrating administrative control over the space in addition to preserving the animals themselves). 96. William R. White, Jr., to Bouvet Island Chamber of Commerce, early 1957 (RA, 36.15/7). 97. Mike Dash, “An Abandoned Lifeboat at World’s End,” mikedashhistory.com, 13 February 2011. 98. E-mail correspondence between Lize-Marié van der Watt and Mike Dash, 10 August 2017. According to the author, his most popular blog posts all concern lonely places.

Bibliography Aagaard, Bjarne. “Den norske hvalfangst i Sydishavet.” Sandefjords Blad, 27 April 1929. Amery, Leo, telegram to Sir Charles Fergusson, Governor General, New Zealand. November 16, 1928. National Archives of South Africa, 136.GG 1342-37-1170. Biermann, H. H. “Minutes of meeting to discuss Bouvet Island reconnaissance expedition.” 25 February 1955. National Archives of South Africa, 113 DWB 110 M11-6-1-7. Boehlke, H.C. “Foreign Ministry memorandum. Amerikansk forespörsel om den planlagte italienske ekspedisjon til Bouvet-öya.” 18 March 1959. National Archives of Norway, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2216. ———, to Norwegian Consulate, Cape Town. 19 March 1959. National Archives of Norway, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2216. ———, to Norwegian Embassy, Rome. 3 July 1959. National Archives of Norway, RA/S-2259/ Dzb/L2216. Castberg, Leif. “Memorandum.” 9 August 1956. National Archives of Norway, 36.2/4. Chun, Carl. Aus den Tiefen des Weltmeeres: Schilderungen von der Deutschen Tiefsee-Expedition. Jena: Fischer, 1903. Colban, Erik, to Foreign Ministry. 11 July 1959. National Archives of Norway, RA/S-2259/ Dzb/L2216. Collis, Christy, and Klaus Dodds. “Assault on the Unknown: The Historical and Political Geographies of the International Geophysical Year (1957–8).” Journal of Historical Geography 34, no. 4 (2008): 555–73.

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Conference of Empire Meteorologists. “Conference of Empire Meteorologists, 1946.” May 1946. National Archives of the United Kingdom: Public Record Office, Dominions Office, 35/1171 W120/1. Crawford, Allan B. Tristan da Cunha and the Roaring Forties. Edinburgh: Charles Skilton, 1982. ———, to Xavier Maere. 15 May 1959. National Archives of South Africa, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2(1). ———, to Major M. Verbruggen. 26 May 1959. National Archives of South Africa, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2(1). ———, to M. Verbruggen. 9 June 1959. National Archives of South Africa, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2(1). ———, to M. P. van Rooy. 11 July 1959. National Archives of South Africa, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2(1). CSAGI. “Report of the Rome Meeting of the CSAGI Sep 1954. Appendix A, Report on Working Group on Geographical Aspects.” September 1954. Thomas Manning Archives at the Scott Polar Research Institute, MS 1308/51/1. Dash, Mike. “An Abandoned Lifeboat at World’s End.” mikedashhistory.com, 13 February 2011. Retrieved 7 August 2017 from https://mikedashhistory.com/2011/02/13/ an-abandoned-lifeboat-at-worlds-end/. Department of External Affairs. “Note.” 26 August 1959. National Archives of South Africa, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2(1). “Destination a Secret: S.A. Plans First Antarctic Trip.” Pretoria News, 3 October 1959. Dodds, Klaus. “South Africa and the Antarctic 1920–1960.” Polar Record 32 (1996): 25–42. ———. “Putting Maps in Their Place: The Demise of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey and the Mapping of Antarctica, 1945–1962.” Ecumene 7, no. 2 (April 2000): 176–210. ———. Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2002. Doel, Ronald E., Robert M. Friedman, Julia Lajus, Sverker Sörlin, and Urban Wråkberg. “Strategic Arctic Science: National Interests in Building Natural Knowledge—Interwar Era through the Cold War.” Journal of Historical Geography 44 (2014): 60–80. Dubow, Saul. A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility and White South Africa 1820–2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. du Toit, Alexander L. Our Wandering Continents: An Hypothesis of Continental Drifting. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1937. “An Expedition to Bouvet Island.” Times, 1 March 1955. Friedman, Robert M. The Expeditions of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup: Contexts for Shaping an Ocean Science. San Diego: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 1994. ———. “Å spise kirsebær med de store.” In Norsk polarhistorie. Vol. 2, Vitenskapene, edited by Einar-Arne Drivenes and Harald Dag Jølle, 331–420. Oslo: Gyldendal, 2004. Fuchs, Vivian. Of Ice and Men: The Story of the British Antarctic Survey 1943–73. Oswestry: Anthony Nelson, 1982. Geological Society of South Africa, “South African Antarctic Research Committee meeting minutes.” 19 November 1945. National Archives of South Africa, 122.DWB 122 154 M18-8. ———. “South African Antarctic Research Committee meeting minutes.” 13 September 1946. National Archives of South Africa, 122.DWB 122 154 M18-8.

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Giæver, John. “Ekspedisjonen til Antarktis 1948–50.” 17 September 1947. State Archive of Norway in Tromsø, A 013 3/6 Box 194, Folder 10B/1. Harper, Kristine. Weather by the Numbers: The Genesis of Modern Meteorology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. Heiberg, Gustav. “Sör-afrikansk meteorologisk stasjon på Bouvetöya.” 9 May 1954. National Archives of Norway, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2215 36.15/6. ———, to Norwegian Embassy, Rome. 16 January 1959. National Archives of Norway, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2216. Hjort, Johan. Handwritten personal notes on trip to London for whaling negotiations. April 21, 1928. National Library of Norway, MS 4˚ 2911, packet “uregistrerte brev 1924–29 Diverse.” Hofmeyr to Schumann. 6 August 1956. National Archives of South Africa, 113 DWB 110 M11-6-1-7. Howell, Norman. “Union Plans Quest to Antarctic: Smuts May Give State Assistance to Noted Scientists’ Project.” Sunday Express, 30 September 1945. Howkins, Adrian. “Frozen Empires: A History of the Antarctic Sovereignty Dispute between Britain Argentina, and Chile, 1939–1959.” PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2008. ———. “Defending Polar Empire: Opposition to India’s Proposal to Raise the ‘Antarctic Question’ at the United Nations in 1956.” Polar Record 44 (2008): 35–44. Huyser, Onno. “Bouvetøya (Bouvet Island).” In Important Bird Areas in Africa and Associated Islands: Priority Sites for Conservation, edited by Lincoln D. C. Fishpool and Michael I. Evans, 113–15. Cambridge: Pisces Publications and BirdLife International, 2001. Illegible, to Mr. Killen. 24 August 1959. National Archives of South Africa, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2(1). Jaklin, Patrick. “Norsk feltstasjon tatt av naturkreftene ved Antarktis.” Norsk Polarinstitutt, July 20, 2010. Retrieved 19 July 2011 from http://www.npolar.no/no/om-oss/nyheter/ arkiv/2007/2007-10-19-norsk-feltstasjon-tatt-av-naturkrefter.html. Jenssen, Elin Vinje. “Bouvetøya—85 år under norsk styre.” Norsk Polarinstitutt, 19 December 2012. Retrieved 8 August 2017 from http://www.npolar.no/no/nyheter/2012/ 2012-12-19-bouvetoya-85-ar-under-norsk-styre.html. ———. “Ny feltstasjon på plass på Bouvetøya.” Norsk Polarinstitutt, 10 February 2014. Retrieved 8 August 2017 from http://www.npolar.no/no/nyheter/2014/2014-02-10-nyfeltstasjon-bouvet.html. ———. “Forskere på vei til Bouvetøya.” Norsk Polarinstitutt, 12 December 2014. Retrieved 8 August 2017 from http://www.npolar.no/no/nyheter/2014/2014-12-12-paa-vei-bou vet.html. King, H. G. R., and Ann Savours, eds. Polar Pundit: Reminiscences about Brian Birley Roberts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. King, L. C. “Proposed South African Antarctic Research Expedition to the Weddell Sea.” April 4, 1944. Copy in National Archives of South Africa, 122.DWB 122 154 M18-8. Launius, Roger, James Fleming, and David DeVorkin. “Rise of Global Scientific Inquiry in the International Polar and Geophysical Years.” In Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years, edited by Roger Launius, James Fleming, and David DeVorkin, 1–9. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

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Lindley, Francis, to Sir Austen Chamberlain. 12 March 1928. National Archives of South Africa, 136.GG 1342-37-1170. Marsh, John H. No Pathway Here. Cape Town: H. B. Timmins, 1948. Mawson to Lester King. June 27, 1945. Mawson Collection, Mawson Centre, South Australian Museum, 19 DM. Mills, William. “Bouvet de Lozier, Jean.” In Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia. Vol. 1, A–L, edited by William Mills, 96. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003. Myhre, Knut, to Foreign Ministry. 12 April 1958. National Archives of Norway, 36.15/7. ———, to Foreign Ministry. 14 January 1959. National Archives of Norway, RA/S-2259/ Dzb/L2216 Nævdal, P. “Foreign Ministry memorandum. Amerikansk henvendelse i anledning den planlagte italienske ekspedisjon til Bouvet-öy.” 2 October 1959. National Archives of Norway, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2216. Nielsen, Henry, and Kristian H. Nielsen. “Camp Century—Cold War City Under the Ice.” In Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice, edited by Ronald E. Doel, Kristine C. Harper, and Matthias Heymann, 195–216. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Norwegian Consulate, Cape Town, to Foreign Ministry. 30 January 1959. National Archives of Norway, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2216. ———, to Foreign Ministry. 2 May 1959. National Archives of Norway, RA/S-2259/Dzb/ L2216 Norwegian Foreign Ministry. “St. med. nr 14: Om Norges anneksjon av Bouvet-øya.” January 18, 1929. Retrieved 19 July 2011 from https://www.stortinget.no/no/Sakerog-publikasjoner/Stortingsforhandlinger/Lesevisning/?p=1929&paid=2&wid=a&ps id=DIVL1509&pgid=a_1633. Norwegian General Consul (South Africa). “Note by Norwegian General Consul.” 8 June 1954. State Archive of Norway in Tromsø, Box 227, Folder 254j. Orvin, Anders, to Silvio Zavatti. 8 December 1958. National Archives of Norway, 36.15/7. ———, to Foreign Ministry. 30 June 1959. National Archives of Norway, RA/S-2259/Dzb/ L2216, RA/S-2259/Dzb/L2216. Petersen, Nikolaj. “The Iceman That Never Came: ‘Project Iceworm,’ The Search for a NATO Deterrent, and Denmark, 1960–62.” Scandinavian Journal of History 33, no. 1 (2008): 75–98. Petterssen, Sverre. Weathering the Storm: Sverre Petterssen, the D Day Forecast, and the Rise of Modern Meteorology, edited by James R. Fleming. Boston: American Meteorological Society, 2001. Polar Committee. “Second Polar Committee meeting minutes.” November 14, 1945. National Archives of the United Kingdom: Public Record Office, Dominions Office, 35/1171 W146/4. “Press release telegram.” 2 December 1959. National Archives of South Africa, 86.BTS 102-7-2-1(2). Pyne, Stephen J. The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986. Roberts, Peder. The European Antarctic: Science and Strategy in Scandinavia and the British Empire. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Roberts, Peder, Klaus Dodds, and Lize-Marié van der Watt. “‘But Why Do You Go There?’ Norway and South Africa in the Antarctic during the 1950s.” In Science, Geopolitics

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and Culture in the Polar Region: Norden beyond Borders, edited by Sverker Sörlin, 79– 110. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. Schumann to Transport Secretary. 1 August 1947. National Archives of South Africa, 122. DWB 122 154 M18-8. ——— to Sverdrup. 14 July 1953. State Archive of Norway in Tromsø, Box 194, Folder 10. Secret Department of External Affairs. “Memorandum on South African participation in Antarctic operations.” 26 June 1959. National Archives of South Africa, 85.BTS 102-2-7-2(1). Solberg, Halvor, to Foreign Ministry. 4 June 1954. National Archives of Norway, RA/S2309/D/Da/L0373/0003 Folder “Meteorologiske institusjoner. Det internasjon. geofysiske år 57/58 (Antarktisk-ekspedisjon) 1954–59.” ———, to Foreign Ministry. 9 November 1954. National Archives of Norway, RA/S-2259/ Dzb/L2186. Solomon, Stuart. “Preliminary Report on Bouvet Island Base Locations.” 24 February 1955. National Archives of Norway, 36.15/7. South African Embassy, Washington DC, to Department of External Affairs. 5 November 1959. National Archives of South Africa, 86.BTS 102-7-2-1(2). Stewart, J. G., to Department of Transport. 31 March 1960. National Archives of South Africa, 77.BTS 102-2-6(2). Sullivan, Walter. Assault on the Unknown: The International Geophysical Year. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961. “Sydafrikansk ekspedisjon besøkte nylig Bouvet-øen.” Aftenposten, 15 July 1955. Sverdrup to Schumann. 8 August 1953. State Archive of Norway in Tromsø, Box 194, Folder 10. ——— to Foreign Ministry. 28 February 1956. National Archives of Norway, 36.15/7. ——— to Burkhanov. 25 August 1956. State Archive of Norway in Tromsø, NP Box 212, Folder 96. ——— to Burkhanov. 19 October 1956. State Archive of Norway in Tromsø, NP Box 212, Folder 96. Union of South Africa Weather Bureau. News Letter Centenary Edition—1860–1960. Pretoria: South Africa Weather Bureau, 1960. van der Watt, Lize-Marié. “Return to Gondwanaland: South Africa, Antarctica, Minerals and Apartheid.” Polar Journal 3, no. 1 (2013): 72–93 van der Watt, Lize-Marié, and Sandra Swart. “Falling Off the Map: South Africa, Antarctica and Empire c. 1919–59.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 43, no. 2 (2015): 267–91. van Rooy, M. P., to Leiv Harang. Early October 1958. National Archives of Norway, RA/ S-2259/Dzb/L2217 36.15/11. ———, ed. Meteorology of the Antarctic. Pretoria: Weather Bureau, Department of Transport, 1957. van Sittert, Lance. “‘Ironman’: Joseph Daniels and the White History of South Africa’s Deep South.” Polar Record 51, no. 5 (September 2015): 501–12. Vincent, I. F. S. “Note.” 6 February 1956. National Archives of the United Kingdom: Public Record Office, Foreign Office, 371 119817. ———, to Morgan Man. 3 August 1956. Archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute, MS 1308/51/1 A 1529/16.

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von Hirschberg, C. F. G., to G. J. Price-Jones. 3 May 1957. Archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute, MS 1308/51/1 A 15234/1. Weather Bureau Pretoria to Weather Bureau D. F. Malan. 7 July 1956. National Archives of South Africa, 113 DWB 110 M11-6-1-7. White, William R., Jr., to Bouvet Island Chamber of Commerce. Early 1957. National Archives of Norway, 36.15/7.

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CHAPTER 7

Managing the “White Death” in Cold War Soviet Union Snow Avalanches, Ice Science, and Winter Sports in Kazakhstan, 1960s–1980s Marc Elie

I

n the spring of 1966, a devastating wave of avalanches struck Kazakhstan’s main industrial and urban centers. Avalanches were nothing new in the mountain ranges of Soviet Central Asia. But the sheer volume of snow that poured down into cities that year, destroying infrastructures and claiming lives, was such that avalanches—previously seen as a discrete, random, and low-significance hazard—came to be framed as an important risk and a new threat to the development of Kazakhstan’s capital Alma-Ata (today Almaty). This chapter explains how avalanches became a significant object of state action and scientific inquiry in late socialist Kazakhstan.1 The context is that of a growing anthropic encroachment on mountainous environments that lead to a greater exposure of humans, livestock, houses, and infrastructures to slope hazards—ice and snow avalanches, debris and mudflows, and landslides. As in other mountainous environments in the world, the economic development of Kazakhstan’s mountains after World War II increased the exposure of infrastructures and human activities to natural hazards. Given the human pressure on a fragile environment, natural disasters, which occurred rarely and caused relatively little damage in the past, came to happen often and became a threat to life in the mountains. The commodification of mountainous nature and the increasing vulnerability of its exploiters to natural hazards are two intertwined processes. In Soviet Kazakhstan, too, avalanches and other slope hazards became a growing threat as urbanization and tourism progressed, triggering responses by scientists, engineers, and the state. At this level of explanation, Soviet Kazakhstan is not different from the European Alps or the Peruvian Andes, even if anthropization levels are very low in the former when compared to the latter.2

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However, to explain not only why more destructive avalanches were recorded in Kazakhstan from the 1960s, but why and how they became a political issue, we have to turn to problems typical of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.3 The brutal entry of avalanches onto the scene presented Kazakh leaders with a set of sudden problems menacing some of the major Soviet ambitions in the global Cold War competition. At the same time, avalanches appeared as an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of socialist risk management and scientific research. The superpowers saw hostile environments like hot deserts, deep oceans, and the ice caps as potential war theaters “which needed to be probed, tested, and ultimately brought under control,” as Janet Martin-Nielsen convincingly argues in this volume. In this chapter, I would like to disclose a new facet of “Cold” in “Cold War.” Studies on the “Cold War cultures” have shown that Cold War competition played out not only in strategic matters, but in economic, social, and cultural development as well. With the superpowers entering thermonuclear “peaceful coexistence” in the 1950s, successes in reducing child mortality and raising wages became signs of superiority for both socialist and capitalist “ways of life.” Sports (Olympic Games, chess) and scientific research (space exploration, Nobel Prizes) were central fields where the United States and the Soviet Union invested a lot of energy to dominate.4 The will to attract and win over countries of the newly independent “Global South,” by offering the best irrigation systems, the best youth movements, and superior social and cultural values, was central to Cold War competition.5 The development of mountainous environments associated several fields of competition: winter sports with the effort to organize Olympic Games, achieve feats in mountaineering, and train teams; science and technology with research on cold environments, glaciers, and snow; and touristic and infrastructural development in difficult environments (e.g., ski resorts, roads, railways). Alma-Ata showcased the importance of civil Cold War competition in cold environments. First, with renewed intensity under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Moscow encouraged the economic development and nation building of its Central Asian republics in an effort to elevate this periphery of the Soviet empire into a development model for southern countries. After the break with Mao’s China and as bilateral relations were worsening to the brink of war, the Soviet Union competed for the attention of recently decolonized and non-aligned countries not only with its traditional foe, the United States, but with its former ally, the People’s Republic of China, as well.6 In the spring of 1966, as avalanches raged in Kazakhstan, an earthquake destroyed parts of Tashkent, the capital of neighboring Uzbekistan. Tashkent’s ground zero was used by the Soviet leadership under Leonid  Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin as a tabula rasa for developing an ambitious modern urban project. The quake facilitated the dream of turning Tashkent into a flagship of

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communist urbanism for the recently decolonized South.7 Alma-Ata, then Kazakhstan’s capital, occupied a similar position in the Soviet Union’s ambition to extend its reach internationally. A former borderland of the Russian Empire, Kazakhstan was now striving to achieve communism. Alma-Ata, located in the vicinity of the Chinese border, was considerably expanding and transforming in the 1960s. In this context, avalanche management was tightly harnessed to the goals of developing the Central Asian borderland of the Soviet Union. Second, in the Soviet Cold War context, avalanches were a privileged research field for the scientific institutes of the Soviet republics. After the 1966 shock, avalanche research (lavinovedenie) was dramatically boosted in Kazakhstan. This applied discipline was on the one hand connected to the interdisciplinary science of glaciology, which had acquired military and global significance as earth system science after World War  II.8 The mountains of Central Asia were a place of intense research for glaciologists coming from throughout the Soviet Union. On the other hand, avalanches were connected to the emerging field of natural risk studies and management. Unlike glaciology, where the institutes of Moscow and Leningrad (today Saint Petersburg) played the leading parts, applied risk research involved researchers and engineers who, to a growing extent, were trained in the national Soviet republics. Risk management had a twofold link with the military. First, the bond uniting geographers and the military during cartographic missions in the nineteenth century was reaffirmed in their shared interest in mapping the mountains of border regions. In the 1970s, the general staff of the armed forces and the KGB Border Troops tasked Kazakh glaciologist Igor’ Severskii with mapping the avalanche corridors of many mountainous regions of Central Asia and Siberia.9 Second, risk prevention technology entered new developments in the 1960s. The use of explosives for construction purposes was reinforced in an effort to “civilize” a key military technology and promote “peaceful explosions” (mirnyi vzryv) after the Limited Test Ban Treaty had prohibited surface nuclear tests in 1963. In Kazakhstan, the Medeo dam was erected to protect Alma-Ata from debris flows using two massive, widely publicized explosions in 1966 and 1967.10 Avalanche control in Central Asia also relied on explosives and preventive shelling, with the assistance of military technique and personnel, first of the Turkestan Military District (TurkVO) and then of the Central Asian Military District, created in the course of the conflict with China, with headquarters in Alma-Ata (SAVO).11 Third, avalanches were a challenge to the transformation of Alma-Ata into a winter sports hub. In 1966, infrastructures recently built to develop tourism in the Kazakh capital were most strongly hit by the wave of avalanches. The city had embarked on a path of intense development of its leisure infrastructure in the early 1960s under first party secretary Dinmukhamed Kunaev and city head Esen Duisenov. According to the master plans (general’nye plany)

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Figure 7.1. “Tomorrow at the alpine resort Medeo-Chimbulak.”

Photo: V. Evdokimov and G. Popov, Medeo; Alma-Ata: “Zhalyn” Baspasy, 1977.

adopted in 1963 and 1970, paraseismic hotels were erected in the city center, roads were extended into the higher valleys, and touristic infrastructures grew in the Trans-Ili Alatau, the mountains overlooking the Kazakh capital. Dreaming of hosting the Winter Olympics someday, Alma-Ata had to cope with avalanches threatening skiers and sports infrastructures.12 Sports were a field of Cold War competition and cooperation, and the reciprocal boycott of the games in Moscow and Los Angeles by the United States and Soviet Union respectively in 1980 and 1984 shows that they were heavily politicized in the Cold War context.13 Keeping in mind this Cold War context, I will show how scientists and politicians made avalanches an urging issue of applied science, mountain engineering, and economic development. After a first part devoted to the 1966 wave of avalanches and its consequences on touristic projects for the capital, I will show how scientists and engineers dramatized the avalanche risk to expand their research capacities. Then, in the last part, I will show what risk management reveals of the attitude toward nature in Soviet Kazakhstan.

From the “Black” to the “White Death” The 1966 wave of massive avalanches caught Alma-Ata’s inhabitants off guard. Founded in 1854, Alma-Ata was a young city. Most residents had recently ar-

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rived and could not remember any dramatic avalanche, although the city sat at the foot of a steep mountain ridge, the Trans-Ili Alatau, which belongs to the Tian Shan range. Just above Alma-Ata, a few kilometers away, Peak Komsomol looms 4,330 meters high. Even the older residents (starozhily), who had lived through World War I, had no memory of any massive avalanche comparable to that which took place in 1966. The thaw had just started when the first days of March saw considerable snowfalls. The winter had already been very snowy. Three layers had accumulated: ice, pressed dried snow, and fresh snow. The first avalanches descended from 1 March to 3 March, due to the excessive weight of freshly precipitated snow on the slopes. Heavy snowfall continued, accumulating forty to fifty centimeters in three days (7–9 March) below fifteen hundred meters of altitude. Suddenly, on 13–14 March, the snow turned rainy, and precipitations disrupted the structure of the snow cover. On 15 March, rain turned to snow again and within a day, fifty centimeters of new, fresh snow sat on top of the deep, but weakened and lax snow layers. This concentrated heavy snow triggered massive avalanches in all the valleys above Alma-Ata.14 For the first time, snow avalanches directly impacted Alma-Ata’s center:15 the water supply, phone lines, and all the roads leading from the city to the upper valleys were cut.16 As usual, data on casualties were handled with great secrecy.17 Some snow heaps could not be removed until the summer of 1966, the largest ones not until the summer of 1967.18 These obstructions were a threat for life in the valleys; on the Turgenka River (sixty kilometers east of Alma-Ata), the 1966 avalanches crossed the riverbed and stopped the watercourse, creating a temporary lake. When the snow dam failed, a mighty flood rampaged down the valley.19 Even avalanche specialists were surprised by the 1966 event: “The massive snow avalanches of March 1966 are entirely unusual. . . . They have not been observed in the last 20–30 years.”20 Although the disaster was clearly exceptional, politicians and experts worried that it revealed that Kazakhstan’s expanding cities were entirely unprepared.21 From the 1920s, and especially after World War II, the European Alps converted from summer to winter tourism with extraordinary economic success and dramatic consequences for the mountains.22 In Soviet Kazakhstan in the 1960s, the economic and political leadership decided to further a similar tendency from summer to winter tourism. The Medeo skating arena and Chimbulak ski resort were the highlights of this shift. Consequently, snow hazards gained in significance. Until 1966, the greatest slope hazards had been debris and mudflows occurring mostly in the summer (summers of 1921, 1956, 1963). However, with the 1966 disaster, winter hazards threatened the development of skiing;23 Chimbulak ski resort was hit and the road leading from the city to the resort was closed by huge snow heaps. During the 1966 wave of avalanches, the greatest concern was the protection of the construction sites of the anti-mudflow dam and the future skating

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arena, both located in the Medeo gorge. The avalanches hampered the construction of the dam, an urgent project directly supervised by Kazakhstan’s leader Kunaev. The Medeo dam was designed to give definitive protection to Kazakhstan’s capital against devastating debris and mudflows coming down the Small Almatinka valley. In the mid-1960s, after ten years of debates, rising leader Kunaev had succeeded in imposing a dam construction scheme using directional blasting. However, in the spring of 1966, the construction of the dam had to be stopped after an avalanche heavily injured a sentry in his box and a second one buried a dam worker and a skier’s car. Happily, no one was killed. Just under the Medeo dam (100 meters high, 1,810 meters altitude), Kazakh planners and architects envisioned the reconstruction of a modest skating rink into a formidable palace of all-year ice. It was planned to rival Swiss Davos and welcome international sports competitions. However, the 1966 avalanches revealed that the rink’s site was located on Mount Mokhnatka’s dangerous avalanche corridor on the left bank of the Almatinka gorge. Avalanche specialists listed no fewer than eleven spots from where avalanches threatened the rink. “Most of them [starting zones] give avalanches every year,” they warned. In the massive avalanche year 1966 the most dangerous corridor at Mokhnatka discharged fifteen thousand cubic meters of snow on the rink construction site, and smaller ones gave from a few hundreds to fifteen hundred cubic meters. From the right bank of the river, several avalanche corridors threatened the main road linking Alma-Ata to Medeo and Chimbulak ski resort. A new hazard threatened the development of the Medeo gorge, Kazakhstan’s central winter sports hub and gateway to Chimbulak snow paradise.24 As in the Swiss case analyzed by Dania Achermann in this volume, avalanches posed a new risk when touristic interest for the mountains increased. Avalanches impeded Alma-Ata’s effort to become a major world ski resort; snow scientists were quick to understand that a major opportunity had opened for their field.

Dramatizing the Hazard and Politicizing the Risk The scientists in charge of monitoring and studying avalanches were prone to underlining the damages caused by avalanches and the risks they represented for the extension of the city in the mountains. Igor’ Severskii, a leading avalanche specialist, presented avalanches as the “threatening wild force of the mountains” (groznaia gornaia stikhiia), as an “enemy” (vrag).25 The rhetorical framing of avalanches as an anthropomorphic threat was a classical tool to increase public awareness and raise the value of research on a natural phenomenon. Together with another Kazakh scientist, Viktor Blagoveshchenskii, Severskii has not hesitated to exaggerate the danger of avalanches: “Snow av-

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alanches, from the point of view of their stretch and occurrence, exceed such dangerous phenomena as ground landslides, rockfalls, mudflows. . . . The danger of snow avalanches is greater than that of landslides, floods, cryogenic phenomena, and even seismicity.”26 This is a bold statement, considering that the city had been entirely destroyed by an earthquake in 1887 and several times heavily damaged by debris flows killing hundreds. Flash floods claimed lives every year in the Trans-Ili Alatau. In comparison, avalanches rated very low on the sinister body-count scale. Apart from the avalanche-rich years 1966, 1969, and 1972, avalanches have not presented a massive threat in Kazakhstan’s mountains.27 On average, two persons per year have died in avalanches in the mountains above Alma-Ata.28 This is low compared to the Alps and the Caucasus. In the winters 1950–51 and 1953–54, disastrous avalanches hit the Alps, killing hundreds. In 1970, in French Val-d’Isère, thirty-nine tourists died in a gigantic avalanche. In the Caucasus, dense dwelling at high altitudes ensures that avalanches are a constant problem; in the winter 1975–76, whole districts were cut off from life-supporting infrastructures for months.29 This difference is mainly explained by the low anthropization of Kazakhstan’s mountainous environment.30 However, Kazakhstan’s leadership intended to turn Alma-Ata’s mountains into an important Soviet winter sport resort and dreamed of welcoming the Winter Olympics.31 Scientists insisted that for the future development of winter sports and tourism in the mountains, avalanches were a threat: “Avalanches significantly complicate economic activity in the mountains.”32 In 1978, Severskii showed that avalanches were causing important damages: “In the limits of Kazakhstan’s part of the Tian Shan and Altai, as well as in the mountains of the Dzhungar Alatau, snow avalanches descend every year and cause big material damage even if the territory is weakly developed.”33 Apart from the glaciologists of the Kazakh Academy of Sciences, meteorologists were the most vocal proponents of an increase of state funding in avalanche research, monitoring, and prevention. “The issue of snow avalanches and floods . . . has already outgrown the limits of narrow institutional interests and has grown into a large issue for the state,” Porfir’ev, the head of Kazgidromet, Kazakhastan’s meteorological agency (UGMS), said at a governmental meeting.34 He calculated that damage from avalanches roughly equaled that of mudflows, the much-feared “black death.” And the costs were rising toward the end of the decade because of the avalanche years 1966 and 1969.35 The meteorologists lamented the poor state of their observation network, which proved completely outdated and unadapted. In all Kazakhstan, they had only one specialized avalanche station (close to Chimbulak ski resort), eight high-mountain stations, and fifteen  regular weather stations. These stations in their turn kept smaller posts and gauges alive.36 This was a fairly limited snow observation network for such a broad country, in which the southern re-

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gions bordering with the Tian Shan range concentrated one-third of the total population. The department for avalanche control at Kazgidromet was understaffed, with only five employees. After the spring of 1966, meteorologists petitioned Kazakhstan’s government to have the network significantly extended; they demanded two more specialized avalanche stations and twelve new alpine stations.37 The alarm raised by scientists incited the Kazakh government to augment the funding of avalanche research and observation.38 After a meeting with the head of Alma-Ata, Severskii could set up an avalanche team within the Geography Institute of the Kazakh Academy of Sciences and received considerable material and financial means to further research and monitoring activities in the hard conditions of high mountains.39 Immediately after the 1966 disaster, the Institutes of Hydrogeology and Hydrophysics of the Kazakh Academy of Sciences went on an expedition to map the avalanche spots of the Trans-Ili Alatau. Numerous expeditions took place in the 1970s and 1980s in Kazakhstan and Central Asia.40 Kazakhstan’s glaciologists extended their own permanent observation station “T1,” founded in 1956 at the foot of the Tuiuk-Su glacier (3,700 meters altitude). It became one of the leading glaciological stations in the Soviet Union. The meteorologists, too, extended their observation networks, insufficiently, however, as we will see. The Kazakh leadership’s eagerness to develop a strong republican scientific base for risk management may be explained by the competition between the republics of Central Asia. Meteorologists had complained that Kazakhstan “lag[ged] significantly behind the neighboring Central-Asiatic” meteorological agencies in terms of avalanche monitoring.41 The decentralization campaign launched by Nikita Khrushchev from 1955 onward had deep consequences on the development of scientific knowledge and technological knowhow in the republics. From the end of the 1950s, the Academies of Sciences of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan gained importance in the earth sciences, for instance in hydrology (linked to the irrigation projects for cotton), pedology (linked to the Virgin Lands Program for wheat), and geology (linked to the quest for new resources to mine). The academic institutes of Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan were strong players in the ice and snow sciences. The staff of their scientific teams was increasingly composed of and headed by locally trained specialists (as opposed to being sent from Leningrad and Moscow), such as Igor’ Severskii, alumnus of the Kazakh Pedagogical Institute, and the leading mudflow scientist Iurii  Vinogradov, raised and trained in Tashkent before moving to Alma-Ata.42 The scientists from the Geography Institute of the Kazakh Academy of Sciences around Severskii developed research on avalanches mostly in two directions: the cartography of avalanches and the evaluation of the economic loss inflicted by avalanches. Those were important applied topics that were

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suitable for appealing to the decision-makers of the republic for funding and institutional support. Before decentralization, scientific work was carried out by expeditions dispatched from central agencies (the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Moscow or Leningrad state universities). Beginning in the 1960s, the cartographic work, be it in hydrology, seismology, or glaciology, was done by the republican academies of sciences. Each republic produced its own map sets, and then a global map for the Soviet Union was compiled from the republican maps. The Soviet seismic and avalanche atlas was created on this organizational model. Although Uzbek scientists were more advanced than their counterparts from Kazakhstan in ice science when the avalanche wave struck in 1966, Kazakhstan had, by the 1980s, succeeded in becoming the first avalanche specialist among Central Asiatic republics, and, on the Union scale, second only to the Caucasus.43 The scientific institutions had helped to politicize and dramatize the avalanche issue. However clear the risk, how best to protect people and infrastructures from avalanches remained a controversial and unsolved issue.

From Boot Packing to Slope Blasting The history of avalanche prevention reflects major dilemmas in the way Soviet society adjusted to mountainous nature. Since the construction of the anti-mudflow dam at Medeo in 1966–72, Soviet Kazakhstan had chosen to isolate the urban environment from the menacing mountains. The Medeo dam was thought of as a fortification wall protecting Alma-Ata from mountain hazards. Alternate protection schemes relying on a smoother integration of the city with nature through slope afforestation and riverbed adaptation were rejected, and their promoters, silenced. Zoning and extension of vegetation cover were politically costly decisions because they implied to constrain urban geography: in a tense housing situation, inhabitants and enterprises would have to be removed from and construction forbidden in exposed places. On the contrary, dams and explosives were seen as prestigious and easy to convey to the public as radical solutions to hazards from the mountain surroundings.44 In avalanche prevention, too, a technophile approach won the day: instead of favoring technically light and traditional solutions like zoning and reforestation, Kazakhstan’s engineers and leaders chose to employ heavy and risky means—preventive blasting of avalanche spots, with adverse environmental consequences. In Kazakhstan, preventive unloading of avalanche spots began systematically after 1966. Kazakhstan did not have the necessary expertise in this field and had to call the Central Asiatic Meteorological Institute (SANIGMI) in Tashkent for help. SANIGMI specialists promoted remote “prophylactic un-

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loading” of avalanche spots using artillery. TurkVO, the military region of Central Asia, whose headquarters were in Tashkent, provided them with a mine-launching unit including six 160-millimeter mine launchers.45 SANIGMI specialists and Kazakh meteorologists visited the mountains exploited by the foresting enterprise Kazles in East Kazakhstan. To remove the avalanche danger from the Ust’-Kamenogorsk–Zyrianovsk railway section, the scientists set up the mine launchers. In a confusing situation where it seems that the railway workers fired the artillery untimely, nineteen mines were launched in one day, to no avail: no avalanche descended. This fiasco disappointed the railway directors, who refused to continue working with SANIGMI, “estimating that the prophylactic gunning method is not sufficiently efficient.”46 The Kazakh meteorologists were equally unimpressed by the shelling.47 The delegation from Tashkent encountered further disappointment when confronted with risk management at Tekeliiskii Combine for Lead and Zinc, located in the mountains of Dzhungar Alatau. The combine’s managers favored a penny-wise method to tame avalanches: “After snowfalls, . . . they send people out to avalanche-prone slopes to trample the snow underfoot(!). This practice exposes the life of people to a deadly threat. . . . In fact an accident involving a combine worker has already occurred.” The dangerous snow trample shocked the meteorologists and avalanche specialists who came from Uzbekistan to advise their Kazakh counterparts.48 Kazgidromet had to write an alarmist letter to the Kazakh Council of Ministers denouncing the “inadmissibility, from the point of view of the prevention of accidents, of the avalanche prophylactic method consisting in letting workers trample the snow on avalanche-prone slopes.” After this incident, which made Kazakhstan look ridiculously backward in comparison to Uzbekistan, the combine was forced to abandon this practice.49 However, “boot packing” (meaning compacting fresh snow on slopes by walking or skiing on it in order to harden it) is widely used throughout the world on small areas. Its categorical rejection in Kazakhstan led to the use of more explosives. SANIGMI experts did not succeed in exporting the shelling method to Alma-Ata. Possibly, the competition in snow science between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan made Kazakhstan reluctant to adopt SANIGMI’s know-how. As far as the city and republic authorities were concerned, gunning avalanche spots next to urban centers—Alma-Ata and its satellites Talgar and Kaskelen— could endanger people and infrastructures. For these reasons, after the unsatisfying tests of the late 1960s, the agencies responsible for avalanche control were not allowed to use artillery to shell avalanche spots from a distance in the Trans-Ili Alatau, whereas anti-avalanche specialists in the Caucasus (as well as Switzerland and Austria) used mine launchers.50 They had to use still another method to unload potential avalanches: instead of shelling from a distance, blaster teams hiked to the dangerous spots to plant explosives by hand.51 First

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experienced in the Kazakh part of the Altai Mountains, this technique was then exported to the mountains surrounding Alma-Ata. This was a more controlled manner to unload avalanche spots. Mines thrown from a distance had a high percentage of non-explosion (up to 30 percent); the explosives were hard to remove and remained for long periods in the snow, which was a constant danger to skiers and hikers.52 A team setting up the charge and working in the immediate vicinity of the avalanche spots could avoid such dangers. However, the anti-avalanche teams ran considerable risk for themselves; the handling of explosives at high altitude, the risk of triggering an avalanche when hiking to a spot, and the risk of being buried in an avalanche after detonating the charge made it a dangerous assignment.53 Whatever the method used, explosive unloading had far-reaching environmental consequences. Geographers underlined that “the artificially triggered avalanches have destroyed forest strips . . . that do not have time to recover; the corridors left by the avalanches in the forest zone are longer every year and will reach the bottom of the valley in the foreseeable future, creating new avalanche-dangerous zones for the first time in the last century or millennium.”54 Preventive unloading led to adverse and even opposite effects: by destroying the vegetation cover, it increased the long-term slope risks in the mountains, causing landslides and avalanches to occur more frequently. Scientists working on avalanches were aware that the snow cover stood in close relationship to the mountainous environment; in particular, vegetation and soil are instrumental in understanding how avalanches work. For most blast engineers unloading avalanches, mechanics and geology were central, and they ignored botany and pedology. There were no standards or rules for anti-avalanche explosions in the Soviet Union. Specialists relied on their “experience and intuition” to choose the size of the charge, the mode of triggering, and its position.55 This unsystematic approach led to the establishment of the false belief among explosion experts that “the biggest the charge, the highest the probability to unload the avalanche.”56 Preventive unloading shaded other measures of caution and conveyed a false sense of security; avalanche observation and alarm systems received insufficient attention. A bureaucratic stalemate hampered the development of a competent avalanche service in Soviet Kazakhstan. To make a long story short, no agency wanted to take responsibility for the construction and maintenance of an extensive observation and alarm network for Kazakhstan’s mountains, and the government was unwilling to fund necessary but expensive meteorological stations equipment and personnel. The meteorologists from Kazgidromet consistently refused to become the central player in avalanche risk management, arguing that avalanche surveillance had to stay under the responsibility of each enterprise and district.57 However, ministries were reluctant to maintain their own costly avalanche services in their enterprise network.

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The crux was communication: it took the Kazakh government twentythree years (1951–1974) to install electricity and telephones in the existing observation stations of Kazgidromet in the Big and Small Almatinka rivers, the two main valleys above the capital.58 The great majority of valleys elsewhere in Kazakhstan retained poorly connected avalanche stations in far too low numbers for years. In February 1977, nine residents of Zubovka (Zyrianov district, East-Kazakhstan oblast) died in an avalanche. The only road between Ust’-Kamenogorsk and Zyrianovsk was blocked. An inquiry showed that the local avalanche station had no telephone to warn the population, and the city of Leninogorsk could not find office space and flats to accommodate an avalanche team.59 Hikers and skiers were at risk when progressing even in the well-known valleys of the Trans-Ili Alatau: information on avalanche alert was kept secret, and dangerous corridors and spots were not correctly signaled.60 In the end, notwithstanding the declared goals, avalanches were not under control. A good illustration of this is an accident that caused a stir in governmental circles in the winter of 1975. In the night from 4 to 5 April, a group of skiers went on a hike to Kok Zhailau, a pasture close to Alma-Ata. Located between the Small and Big Almatinka rivers, it offers a famous vista at fifteen hundred to two thousand meters. An avalanche struck the team, burying Anatolii Antsupov, main engineer of Proektmontazhavtomatika, and Vladimir Ushakov, main constructor of the All-Union State Institute of Technological Design. The remainder of the ski group organized the first rescue operation on 5 April with the help of alpinists and a crew of rescuers. This group was, however, not numerous enough to find the place where Antsupov and Ushakov were buried. The search was not resumed the following day. A group of seven (four co-teamers and three rescuers) merely inspected the place. On the third day after the accident, on 7 April, a team of officials led by the deputy chief of police for the Alma-Ata region carried out an aerial inspection of Kok Zhailau. Their conclusions were not reassuring. Rescue operations were “dangerous” in the zone because the starting spot of the avalanche was still full with snow. New avalanches could occur during rescue works. No machines could be lifted to the place; the body search operation could be carried out only by hand. To find the bodies, the experts saw only one solution, consisting of digging up a 500-meter-long search trench—a two-week task for sixty  workers. Before the work could begin, the avalanche starting zone had to be cleared of snow with explosives. All this required important logistical, material, and financial efforts that the government hesitated to invest.61 Although often employed in emergency management, the army was not called in to help. Eventually, notwithstanding the demand of Antsupov’s and Ushakov’s widows, the operations to locate the bodies of the two engineers from Moscow were not engaged. They wrote to the Council of Ministers: “We and our children ask to get help, to examine all possible solutions to find our husbands and fathers, because waiting

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until the summer, until the natural melting of the snow is a horrible, unbearable torture, the avalanche [cover] may not disappear, and water from under the ice will carry their bodies away.”62 The dramatic death of two high-ranking engineers showed that it was hard for Alma-Ata and Kazakhstan to procure the necessary rescue teams and technical means to organize large-scale rescue operations and find the bodies of lost skiers and hikers even at a short distance from the capital. Rescue operations are everywhere hard, dangerous, and costly. Chances of survival in avalanches are in any case very low. It is not unusual that bodies of dead skiers cannot be found until the thaw.63 If large and well-equipped rescue teams were indeed missing in late Soviet Kazakhstan, the lack of proper preventive and protective measures and regular information on avalanches was patent.64 Displaying confidence that the avalanche hazard was under control and enforcing information about avalanche risk were two contradictory objectives. In the 1970s, the first had priority over the second. Avalanches challenged Alma-Ata’s ambitions to become a model of modern socialist urban development where leisure and international sports would occupy central positions. They were at the same time an opportunity to develop applied research and snow know-how in Kazakhstan. In the context of Cold War competition and urgency, this ambivalence of risk perception led Kazakhstan’s elite to enforce a dysfunctional pattern of control over nature that combined environmental destruction with deficient security for persons and infrastructures. This story can be told as a typical Cold War tale. First, like other extreme and hostile environments, alpine mountains were seen as the last natural frontiers on earth and thus as important sites of East-West competition: climber teams rivaled for personal achievements as well as national victories; cities and states competed to show mastery in developing high mountains for tourism and sports and prove their engineering and urbanistic superiority. In the run to win over decolonized countries, the Soviet Union—which competed both with the United States and China—wanted its Central Asia republics to be flagships of socialist progress in urbanism.65 Second, avalanche prevention shows how military technologies extended into aspects of civil life. The “prophylactic unloading” of avalanche spots made use of shelling techniques, artillery units, and explosives from the military bases in Soviet Central Asia. Last, Cold War competition seemed to justify a brutal and radical attitude toward fragile environments, as there was no interest for more modest, less risky, and less destructive approaches to nature when it came to scientific and engineering prestige. The way in which Soviet Kazakhstan handled avalanches shows how far the Union republics loosened from Moscow in the post-Stalin decades. In urban planning and associated applied sciences, the leadership of the republics could take any decision it saw fit and engage the appropriate funding to realize it, without referring either to Moscow or to a set of Union-wide rules. Relying

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on its own scientific and technical knowledge institutions, it was free to design its own comprehensive scheme to protect infrastructure from avalanches and mudflows, free to use shelling, mining, protective works, boot packing, or a composition of those. As a result, competition among republics and their scientific institutions gained momentum, as exemplified here in how Kazakhstan refused to import Uzbekistan’s technology for avalanche control. Making Alma-Ata a world ski resort may have been equally important for both the Soviet Union in the system competition of the Cold War and the Kazakh leader Kunaev for his own glory and that of Kazakhstan and its capital city. From an extremely centralized state under Stalin, the Soviet Union had turned into a superstate tightly controlling a federation of republics, which enjoyed growing prerogatives. This shift is instrumental to understanding why it could collapse so quickly at the turn of the 1980s–90s.66 Post-socialist Almaty continues to dream the winter dream of Soviet AlmaAta. Host to the Winter Asian Games in 2011, Kazakhstan’s former capital applied for the 2022 Winter Olympics but lost to Beijing. Alma-Ata’s Olympic ambitions were born in the 1960s when the leadership launched the assault on the valleys of the Trans-Ili Alatau and developed a winter sports paradise around the Medeo fortress. During the Cold War competition, Medeo became a famous skating arena, and the Soviet alpine ski team trained at Chimbulak ski resort. Avalanches entered the scene in Kazakhstan in 1966 in this crucial time of desired conversion to winter tourism of a southern periphery of the Soviet Union. Limited financial and technological resources, encroaching urban development, and the quest for quick fixes incited the leadership exclusively to favor “prophylactic unloading” in avalanche control, over protective building,67 local boot packing, zoning and afforestation, and even prevention and observation.68 The failure of avalanche risk management reveals that the predatory attitude toward nature is not tantamount to the idea of total control over nature, let alone with its realization.69 Typical for the Soviet rule over nature is its unachieved and controversial character, notwithstanding the great plans and noisy statements. This aspect of Soviet environmental history still remains to be explored.

Marc Elie is a researcher with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He focuses on disasters in Soviet history, especially on drought and erosion in the Eurasian steppes. He has published on mudflows in Kazakhstan in Kritika and Cahiers du monde russe.

Notes 1. Research for this chapter received support from the French-German project “Contemporary Environmental History of the Soviet Union and the Successor States,

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

1970–2000. Ecological Globalization and Regional Dynamics” (EcoGlobReg, ANR13-FRAL-0003, 2014-2018), funded by the National Research Agency (France) and the German Research Foundation. Werner Bätzing, Die Alpen: Geschichte und Zukunft einer europäischen Kulturlandschaft, 2nd ed. (Munich: Beck, 2003), 247–53; Mark Carey, In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). On the Himalaya, see Kenneth Hewitt and Manjari Mehta, “Rethinking Risk and Disasters in Mountain Areas,” Journal of Alpine Research/Revue de Géographie Alpine 100, no. 1 (February 2012). Here I hint not only at the traditional distinction of “hazards” and “risks,” but at the sociology of risk construction, which elaborates on how risk issues are set on the political agenda. Olivier Borraz, “Vers une sociologie du risque?,” in Risques, crises et incertitudes: pour une analyse critique, ed. Groupement d’intérêt scientifique Risques collectifs et situations de crise, Claude Gilbert, and Pierre-Benoît Joly (Grenoble: Publications de la MSH-Alpes, 2005), 21–67, 28. Peter J. Kuznick and Gilbert James Burkhart, eds., Rethinking Cold War Culture (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001); Klaus Gestwa and Stefan Rohdewald, “Verflechtungsstudien. Naturwissenschaft und Technik im Kalten Krieg,” Osteuropa 59, no. 10 (2009). Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Moritz Florin, “What Is Russia to US? Making Sense of Stalinism, Colonialism and Soviet Modernity in Kyrgyzstan, 1956–1965,” Ab Imperio 2016, no. 3 (22 December 2016): 165–89; Artemy M. Kalinovsky, “Not Some British Colony in Africa: The Politics of Decolonization and Modernization in Soviet Central Asia, 1955–1964,” Ab Imperio 2013, no. 2 (28 August 2013): 191–222. On the worsening of the relationship between the USSR and PRC, see Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Nigel Raab, “The Tashkent Earthquake of 1966: The Advantages and Disadvantages of a Natural Tragedy,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 62, no. 2 (2014): 273–74; Romain Huret and Marc Elie, “Soviet and American Ways of Dealing with Disasters in the Cold War Years, 1940s–1990s,” presented at the international workshop “Dealing with Disasters: An International Approach” (9–10 September 2013). Paul Stronski shows how pre-earthquake Tashkent was already seen as a model socialist city in “backward” southern societies. Paul Stronski, Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930– 1966 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 234. In the growing body of works on the link between earth system science and Cold War militarization of scientific research, see the contributions of Janet Martin-Nielsen, Ingo Heidbrink, Sophie Elixhauser, Roger D. Launius, and Peder Roberts and Lize-Marié van der Watt to this volume. Boris Belge and Klaus Gestwa, “Wetterkrieg und Klimawandel. Die Meteorologie im Kalten Krieg,” Osteuropa 59, no. 10 (2009); Ronald E. Doel, “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA after 1945,” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003). Especially on polar research: Matthias Heymann et al., “Exploring Greenland: Science and Technology in Cold War Settings,” Scientia Canadensis 33, no. 2 (2010).

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9. Recorded interview with Igor’ Vasil’evich Severskii, deputy director of the Institute of Geography of the Republic of Kazakhstan, 3 October 2011, Almaty. 10. Marc Elie, “Coping with the ‘Black Dragon’ Mudflow Hazard and the Controversy over the Medeo Dam in Kazakhstan, 1958–1966,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 14, no. 2 (2013). 11. Vitalii I. Fes’kov, Konstantin A. Kalashnikov, and Valerii I. Golikov, Sovetskaia armiia v gody ‘kholodnoi voiny’ (1945–1991) (Tomsk: Izdatel’stvo Tomskogo universiteta, 2004), 9. 12. Marc Elie, “Governing by Hazard: Controlling Mudslides and Promoting Tourism in the Mountains above Alma-Ata (Kazakhstan), 1966–1977,” in Governing Disasters: Beyond Risk Culture, ed. Sandrine Revet and Julien Langumier (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 13. V. E. Bagdasarian et al., Sovetskoe zazerkal’e. Inostrannyi turizm v SSSR v 1930–1980-e gody: Uchebnoe posobie (Moscow: Forum, 2007), 165–67; M. Iu. Prozumenshchikov, Bol’shoi sport i Bol’shaia politika (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004). 14. R. D. Kudrin, M. P. Tolstunov, and G. G. Kharitonov, “Note on the formation and descent of avalanches in March 1966 and on the situation to expect in the mountains of the Trans-Ili Alatau,” 22 March 1966 (Central State Archive of Kazakhstan [henceforth TsGAK], fond 2017, opis’ 1, delo, 1238, listy 12–17 [TsGAK 2017/1/1238/12–17]). 15. Precise data show that prior to 1966, the biggest avalanches descended in the winters 1926–27, 1936–37, 1944–45, 1947–48, 1954–55, 1956–57, 1960–61 (Trans-Ili Alatau); in 1934–35, 1940–41, 1944–45, 1959–60 (Dzhungar Alatau); and in 1944–45, 1948–49, 1951–52, 1955–56, 1960–61 (Altai). But they did not “disrupt the normal rhythm of life” of city dwellers: S. M. Miagkov and L. A. Kanaev, eds., Geografiia lavin (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1992), 300; D. Kachalov, Head of the Department of Weather Forecast of the Alma-Ata Weather Bureau, 30 May 1966 (TsGAK, 2017/1/1238/59–64). 16. T. Baimoldaev and V. Vinokhodov, Kazselezashchita—Operativnye mery do i posle stikhii (Almaty: Bastau, 2007), 8. 17. We do, however, learn of three teenagers who disappeared on the road to Chimbulak ski resort. Tolstunov to Porfir’ev, 4 March 1969 (TsGAK, 2017/1/1606/60). 18. Kudrin and Tolstunov, “Note on the repartition and volume of the avalanche heaps in the Small and Big Almatinka rivers” (TsGAK, 2017/1/1238/42–43). 19. Baimoldaev and Vinokhodov, Kazselezashchita, 8. 20. Kudrin, Tolstunov, and Kharitonov, “Note on the formation of avalanches.” 21. Esen Duisenov, Alma-Ata (Alma-Ata: Kazakhstan, 1968), 82. 22. In 1980, there were forty million vacationers and sixty million day or weekend visitors in the Alps. Mary L. Barker, “Traditional Landscape and Mass Tourism in the Alps,” Geographical Review 72, no. 4 (October 1982); Bätzing speaks of “devaluation” (Entwertung) of nature brought about by industrialization and touristification. Bätzing, Die Alpen, 252–53. Andrea Macchiavelli gives a review of the question in Andrea Macchiavelli, “Alpine Tourism,” Journal of Alpine Research/Revue de Géographie Alpine 97, no. 1 (June 2009). 23. M. Tolstunov, head of the team for snow and avalanches of Kazgidromet, spoke of “winter mudflows.” M. Tolstunov, “Snow avalanches in the mountains of Kazakhstan,” Wall Newspaper of Kazgridomet, before 22 March 1966 (TsGAK, 2017/1/1238/3–4).

Managing the “White Death” in Cold War Soviet Union 205

24. R. Kudrin, M. Tolstunov, and E. Orlov, “Conclusion on the avalanche hazard in the construction zone of the anti-mudflow dam,” 1966 (TsGAK, 1137/25/769a/113–16). 25. Igor’ Severskii, Laviny—groznaia stikhiia gor (Alma-Ata: Nauka Kazakhskoi SSR, 1980), 8. 26. Igor’ Severskii and Viktor Petrovich Blagoveshchenskii, Lavinoopasnye raiony Kazakhstana, Institut geografii Akademii nauk Kazakhskoi SSR (Alma-Ata: “Nauka” Kazakhskoi SSR, 1990), 2–3. 27. Miagkov and Kanaev, Geografiia lavin, 300. 28. Recorded interview with Viktor Blagoveshchenskii, researcher at the Institute of Geography of the Republic of Kazakhstan, 4 October 2011, Almaty. 29. Severskii, Laviny, 12–13. 30. Charis Keller-Lengen, Felix Keller, and Roland Ledergerber, Die Gesellschaft im Umgang mit Lawinengefahren: Fallstudie Graubünden. Arbeitsbericht NFP 31 (Zurich: Vdf Hochsch.-Verl. an der ETH, 1998), 14; interview with Severskii. 31. V. Evdokimov, Ledovaia zhemchuzhina (Alma-Ata: Kazakhstan, 1978), 5–6, 28, 61. 32. Severskii and Blagoveshchenskii, Lavinoopasnye raiony Kazakhstana, 2. 33. Igor’ Severskii, Snezhnye laviny Zailiiskogo i Dzhungarskogo alatau (Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1978), 3, emphasis added. 34. Minutes of a governmental meeting, excerpt, “3. On the measures to ameliorate the protection of the population and economic sites of the Kazakh SSR from snow avalanches and mudflows,” 1966 (TsGAK, R-1137/1p/2608/101–7), 102. 35. A total of more than 9 million rubles for each hazard. “Material damage from snow avalanches,” 1969 (TsGAK, 2017/1/1606/52). 36. M. P. Tolstunov, “Observations on the study of the formation of snow cover and on the organization of the observation and prevention service on the avalanche danger in Kazakhstan’s mountains,” before 29 December 1967 (TsGAK, 2017/1/1368/55–62). 37. Ibid. 38. KSSR Council of Ministers, “On measures to ameliorate the protection of the population and economic sites of the Kazakh SSR from snow avalanches and mudflows,” decree no. 103, 16 February 1967 (Central State Archives of Almaty (TsGAgA) 174/29/1206/88). 39. Interview with Severskii. 40. Igor’ Severskii and Viktor Blagoveshchenskii, Otsenka lavinnoi opasnosti gornoi territorii (Alma-Ata: Nauka Kazakhskoi SSR, 1983), 3–8. 41. UGMS, “Report on the fulfillment of the snow and avalanche works in Kazakhstan’s mountains,” after CM decree no. 103 from 16 February 1967, end of 1967 (TsGAK, 2017/1/1368/31–36). 42. Elie, “Governing by Hazard,” 23–58. 43. Miagkov and Kanaev, Geografiia lavin, 192. 44. Elie, “Coping with the ‘Black Dragon.’” 45. Kudrin, Tolstunov, and Kharitonov, “Note on the formation of avalanches.” 46. Iu. D. Moskalev, Head of SANIGMI snow avalanche laboratory and G. G. Kharitonov, SANIGMI Junior Researcher, April 1966 (TsGAK, 2017/1/1238/12–17/35–39). 47. Tolstunov to Porfir’ev, “Report on the possibility of the prophylactic unloading of snow avalanches,” 18 February 1969 (TsGAK, 2017/1/1606/45–47). 48. E. B. Krasnosel’skii, head of the avalanche detachment of SANIGMI, A. B.  Runich, engineer of the same detachment, and M. P. Tolstunov, head of the snow measurement

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49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56.

57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65.

66. 67. 68.

and avalanche squad of KSSR UGMS, “Conclusions on the avalanche hazard in the districts of the Dzhungar Alatau,” 20 May 1966 (TsGAK, 2017/1/1238/29–32). I. F. Porfir’ev, head of KSSR UGMS, to I. G. Slazhnev, deputy chairman of KSSR CM, 15 July 1966 (TsGAK, 2017/1/1238/65–67). Interview with Blagoveshchenskii. Tolstunov to Porfir’ev, “Prophylactic unloading of snow avalanches.” Baimoldaev and Vinokhodov, Kazselezashchita, 135. Interview with Blagoveshchenskii. Miagkov and Kanaev, Geografiia lavin, 303. A. K. Diunin, A. R. Gerber, and A. G. Fomin, “Sostoianie issledovanii po inzhenernoi zashchite ot lavin,” in Trudy vtorogo vsesoiuznogo soveshchaniia po lavinam (Iangiabad, Mai 1985) (Leningrad: Gidrometizdat, 1987), 283. A. R. Gerber, “Sostoianie i perspektivy rabot po predupreditel’nomu spusku lavin na zheleznykh dorogakh SSSR,” in Trudy vtorogo vsesoiuznogo soveshchaniia po lavinam (Iangiabad, Mai 1985) (Leningrad: Gidrometizdat, 1987), 338. I. F. Porfir’ev, “On the comment of comrade Simakov K.M. on the decree project ‘On measures to ameliorate the protection of the population and economic sites of the Kazakh SSR from snow avalanches and mudflows,’” 1967 (TsGARK 1137/25/769a/39– 41). Gidromet’s function was to produce “background coverage (fonovoe osveshchenie) of the hydrometeorological regime,” but not to coordinate a specific risk management network. Alma-Ata Ispolkom to Governmental Flood Commission, 14 March 1973 (TsGAgA, 174/29/1206/75–77). Iu. Izrael’ to USSR Council of Ministers, 14 March 1977 (TsGARK, 1137/27/912/34–35); “Governmental Commission’s Report,” 21 March 1977, (TsGARK, 1137/27/912/45–46). TsGARK 1137/25/1372/86–93; interview with Blagoveshchenskii. Rescue commission of Alma-Ata’s regional Soviet, “Act,” 7 April 1975 (TsGAK, R-1137/26/2065/41–42). M. I. Antsupova and F. P. Ushakova, “Request to I. G. Slazhnev, deputy chairman of the KSSR CM,” 9 April 1975 (TsGAK, R-1137/26/2065/40 and verso). In Switzerland, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, only four from ten skiers and alpinists buried in an avalanche survived. Chances of finding a victim alive are higher within the fifteen minutes following the avalanche. After half an hour, one out of two buried victims dies from suffocation, trauma, or hypothermia. Walter Ammann, Othmar Buser, and Usch Vollenwyder, Lawinen (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1997), 152. TsGAK, R-1137/26/2065/4–5. Artemy M. Kalinovsky, “A Most Beautiful City for the World’s Tallest Dam: Internationalism, Social Welfare, and Urban Utopia in Nurek,” Cahiers du Monde Russe 57, no. 4 (2016). Elie, “Coping with the ‘Black Dragon.’” Wooden avalanche fences were installed only on Mount Mokhnatka to protect the rink. Interview with Severskii. The use of explosions to solve problems was common in mudflow protection. Not only had the Medeo dam been built through directional blasting, but explosions were used to empty swollen moraine lakes (with great danger and adverse environmental impact). Elie, “Governing by Hazard.”

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69. Douglas Weiner, “The Predatory Tribute-Taking State: A Framework for Understanding Russian Environmental History,” in The Environment and World History, ed. Edmund Burke and Kenneth Pomeranz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).

Bibliography Ammann, Walter, Othmar Buser, and Usch Vollenwyder. Lawinen. Basel: Birkhäuser, 1997. Bagdasarian, V. E., I. B. Orlov, I. I. Shnaidgen, A. A. Fedulin, and K. A. Mazin. Sovetskoe zazerkal’e. Inostrannyi turizm v SSSR v 1930–1980-e gody: Uchebnoe posobie. Moscow: Forum, 2007. Baimoldaev, T., and V. Vinokhodov. Kazselezashchita—Operativnye mery do i posle stikhii. Almaty: Bastau, 2007. Barker, Mary L. “Traditional Landscape and Mass Tourism in the Alps.” Geographical Review 72, no. 4 (October 1982): 395–415. Belge, Boris, and Klaus Gestwa. “Wetterkrieg und Klimawandel. Die Meteorologie im Kalten Krieg.” Osteuropa 59, no. 10 (2009): 15–42. Borraz, Olivier. “Vers une sociologie du risque?” In Risques, crises et incertitudes: pour une analyse critique, edited by Groupement d’intérêt scientifique Risques collectifs et situations de crise, Claude Gilbert, and Pierre-Benoît Joly. Grenoble: Publications de la MSH-Alpes, 2005. Carey, Mark. In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Diunin, A. K., A. R. Gerber, and A. G. Fomin. “Sostoianie issledovanii po inzhenernoi zashchite ot lavin.” In Trudy vtorogo vsesoiuznogo soveshchaniia po lavinam (Iangiabad, Mai 1985), 283–94. Leningrad: Gidrometizdat, 1987. Doel, Ronald E. “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA after 1945.” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (October 2003): 635–66. Duisenov, Esen. Alma-Ata. Alma-Ata: Kazakhstan, 1968. Elie, Marc. “Coping with the ‘Black Dragon’ Mudflow Hazard and the Controversy over the Medeo Dam in Kazakhstan, 1958–1966.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 14, no. 2 (2013): 313–42. ———. “Governing by Hazard: Controlling Mudslides and Promoting Tourism in the Mountains above Alma-Ata (Kazakhstan), 1966–1977.” In Governing Disasters: Beyond Risk Culture, edited by Sandrine Revet and Julien Langumier, 23–58. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Evdokimov, V. Ledovaia zhemchuzhina. Alma-Ata: Kazakhstan, 1978. Evdokimov, V., and G. Popov. Medeo. Alma-Ata: ‘Zhalyn Baspasy, 1977. Fes’kov, Vitalii I., Konstantin A. Kalashnikov, and Valerii I. Golikov. Sovetskaia armiia v gody ‘kholodnoi voiny’ (1945–1991). Tomsk: Izdatel’stvo Tomskogo universiteta, 2004. Florin, Moritz. “What Is Russia to US? Making Sense of Stalinism, Colonialism and Soviet Modernity in Kyrgyzstan, 1956–1965.” Ab Imperio 2016, no. 3 (22 December 2016): 165–89. Gerber, A. R. “Sostoianie i perspektivy rabot po predupreditel’nomu spusku lavin na zheleznykh dorogakh SSSR.” In Trudy vtorogo vsesoiuznogo soveshchaniia po lavinam (Iangiabad, Mai 1985), 337–39. Leningrad: Gidrometizdat, 1987.

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Gestwa, Klaus, and Stefan Rohdewald. “Verflechtungsstudien. Naturwissenschaft und Technik im Kalten Krieg,” Osteuropa 59, no. 10 (2009): 5–14. Hewitt, Kenneth, and Manjari Mehta. “Rethinking Risk and Disasters in Mountain Areas.” Journal of Alpine Research/Revue de Géographie Alpine 100, no. 1 (February 2012). Heymann, Matthias, Henrik Knudsen, Maiken L. Lolck, Henry Nielsen, Kristian H. Nielsen, and Christopher J. Ries. “Exploring Greenland: Science and Technology in Cold War Settings.” Scientia Canadensis 33, no. 2 (2010): 11–42. Huret, Romain, and Marc Elie. “Soviet and American Ways of Dealing with Disasters in the Cold War Years, 1940s–1990s.” Presented at the international workshop “Dealing with Disasters: An International Approach,” 9–10 September 2013. Kalinovsky, Artemy M. “Not Some British Colony in Africa: The Politics of Decolonization and Modernization in Soviet Central Asia, 1955–1964.” Ab Imperio 2013, no. 2 (28 August 2013): 191–222. ———. “A Most Beautiful City for the World’s Tallest Dam: Internationalism, Social Welfare, and Urban Utopia in Nurek.” Cahiers du Monde Russe 57, no. 4 (2016): 819–46. Keller-Lengen, Charis, Felix Keller, and Roland Ledergerber. Die Gesellschaft im Umgang mit Lawinengefahren: Fallstudie Graubünden. Arbeitsbericht NFP 31. Zurich: Vdf Hochsch.-Verl. an der ETH, 1998. Kuznick, Peter J., and Gilbert James Burkhart, eds. Rethinking Cold War Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. Lüthi, Lorenz M. The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. Macchiavelli, Andrea. “Alpine Tourism.” Journal of Alpine Research/Revue de Géographie Alpine 97, no. 1 (June 2009). Miagkov, S. M., and L. A. Kanaev, eds. Geografiia lavin. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1992. Prozumenshchikov, M. Iu. Bol’shoi sport i Bol’shaia politika. Moskva: ROSSPEN, 2004. Raab, Nigel. “The Tashkent Earthquake of 1966: The Advantages and Disadvantages of a Natural Tragedy.” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 62, no. 2 (2014): 273–94. Severskii, Igor’. Snezhnye laviny Zailiiskogo i Dzhungarskogo alatau. Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1978. ———. Laviny—groznaia stikhiia gor. Alma-Ata: Nauka Kazakhskoi SSR, 1980. Severskii, Igor’, and Viktor Blagoveshchenskii. Otsenka lavinnoi opasnosti gornoi territorii. Alma-Ata: Nauka Kazakhskoi SSR, 1983. ———. Lavinoopasnye raiony Kazakhstana, Institut geografii Akademii nauk Kazakhskoi SSR. Alma-Ata: Nauka Kazakhskoi SSR, 1990. Stronski, Paul. Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930–1966. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010. Weiner, Douglas. “The Predatory Tribute-Taking State: A Framework for Understanding Russian Environmental History.” In The Environment and World History, edited by Edmund Burke and Kenneth Pomeranz, 276–315. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Werner Bätzing, Werner. Die Alpen: Geschichte und Zukunft einer europäischen Kulturlandschaft. 2nd ed. Munich: Beck, 2003. Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

/ PART III Cultures and Narratives of Ice and Snow

/

CHAPTER 8

Laboratory Metaphors in Antarctic History From Nature to Space Sebastian Vincent Grevsmühl

Introduction A 1970 special issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists edited by Philip Smith, deputy head of the Office of Polar Programs (NSF), declared that Antarctica has been “a conspicuously successful model as a laboratory for human and international relations.”1 The Antarctic Treaty (AT), signed in 1959 by twelve countries actively engaged in scientific Antarctic programs during the International Geophysical Year (IGY), is generally considered as having provided a robust legal framework in achieving this utopian dream of global scientific brotherhood.2 As a so-called legal laboratory, Antarctica not only figured as the “precedent for the Treaty on Outer Space”3 but also provided key arguments regarding legislation of the deep sea via the mobilization of a unique legal reasoning known to legal scholars as “the Antarctic analogy.”4 Thus, it provided important legal rules for yet other remote and perilous environments that were, at the beginning of the 1960s, still ill-defined.5 Besides this important role as legal and political laboratory during the Cold War,6 the seventh continent saw also a great diversification of laboratory visions that were developed in close conjunction with a broader scientific inquiry into the Antarctic region. The geophysical sciences tempted, since the IGY, to establish Antarctica as a “geophysical laboratory” pointing at the very specific geophysical conditions one can find only on the Antarctic continent, in its atmosphere and its surrounding oceans. Life scientists, in particular human biologists, but also behavioral scientists, physiologists, and psychologists promoted immediately after IGY the Antarctic region as a “natural human laboratory,” exploring various impacts of extreme isolation and confinement on human nature. Space advocates finally discovered during the 1960s the Antarctic continent as a veritable “space laboratory,” promoting the frozen South

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as a fertile testing ground for space equipment and infrastructure as well as human suitability tests for long-term space missions. These divergent and sometimes competing laboratory visions show that today, literally every branch of science is involved in some way or another in Antarctic affairs. There is almost no scientific discipline that does not mobilize at least one of those multiple laboratory visions to describe or even justify its own research interests in what is quite tellingly referred to as the “largest laboratory in the world.”7 The legal framework alone—albeit its important insistence on the heuristic value of analogical reasoning—is however not sufficient to explain the emergence of this great variety of laboratory visions, which were mostly established at the height of the Cold War. In a qualitative case study of articles on Antarctica published in National Geographic, Jason Davis argued that the metaphor of the “Antarctic laboratory” was introduced in the 1930s. He further stressed that during the 1970s one may observe the emergence of a true global dimension of Antarctic affairs and a decade later the firm integration of environmental discourses in the description of Antarctic research.8 My objective is to critically nuance those observations with reflections on the actual implications of using laboratory metaphors in connection with the Antarctic setting in order to find out what they can tell us about scientific activities in Antarctica, especially during the Cold War. In particular the fact that the natural sciences frequently underline the pure and immaculate character of the Antarctic region associated with the common metaphor of the biggest “natural laboratory” in the world, pointing thereby at the unique physical conditions one may only find “south of 60° South Latitude,” merit close scrutiny.9 This chapter also expands to the Antarctic region previous research conducted by Matthew Farish on the important “geographic triad of arctic, desert and tropic that defined American military research on ‘natural environmental settings’ during the twentieth century.”10 From a methodological point of view, this implies mainly two aspects. First, my analysis asks for granting a certain importance to the mobilization of metaphors within scientific discourse. As I argue in this chapter, metaphors can acquire a structural and normative function within a specific scientific domain, and they can migrate, often with important modifications, between different disciplines. Moreover, and this is my second methodological assumption, not only metaphors but also spatial dimensions have a profound influence on scientific and cultural practices. That notions like “place” and “space” indeed matter has become the concern of many scholars not only in geography but also in sociology, anthropology, history, and cultural studies.11 This chapter provides evidence for a historical analysis of the Antarctic region as a unique “laboratory” and a very specific place and space of knowledge production where the history of laboratories and the history of landscapes intimately merge.12 One aspect in particular, the great difficulty to replicate elements of outer space

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conditions on earth, gave rise to a potent laboratory vision during the Cold War and the space race: Antarctica as a space laboratory. After a short introduction to the use of metaphors in science, I trace in a more reflexive first part the master metaphor of the Antarctic, the so-called natural laboratory, back to its historical origins and its particular environmental setting: the mountains. This short excursion to the metaphor’s historical roots is indeed necessary to identify the continuities but also the discontinuities that exist between early laboratory metaphors and their later counterparts. It may also help to grasp the problematic relationship of fundamental categories like “nature” and “laboratory,” the “field sciences” and “laboratory sciences.” In a second part I provide concrete examples of one laboratory vision in particular, the “space laboratory,” which is tightly connected to another laboratory metaphor, the “human laboratory.” Space research and psychological research, I argue, emerged during the Cold War within the Antarctic context mainly because of their immediate relevance for national security and military dominance in “hostile” environmental settings. Indeed, Antarctica, far removed from Cold War rivalries in the Arctic, benefited at the height of the Cold War from the relative remoteness and a less tense geopolitical setting with no indigenous population present. In the concluding remarks I explain how these historical developments are reflected in the use of different laboratory metaphors and why paying close attention to historical trajectories of metaphors may reveal new crucial insights into the nature of scientific research in “extreme” environments, especially within the polar context. One main lesson that may be taken from this chapter is that one can observe at many historical stages an important interconnectedness between the scientific working environment and the actual objects of study. This concordance not only blurs the line of any sharp distinction between the laboratory and the field, but it also is in more general terms a more accurate account of the very nature of the multiple “marginal” and “extreme” geographies that become visible, as we will see, especially during the Cold War period and which helped shape the contours of the Cold Car.

Why Consider Metaphors? Numerous case studies document the heuristic value of following metaphors throughout different historical and disciplinary contexts. For example, in history of science, Nancy Leys Stepan studied the metaphorical relationship established during the nineteenth century between race and gender. She showed that this metaphorical rapprochement had considerable political effects and

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that it played a fundamental role in the scientific orientation of many research programs. She argued in particular that the metaphorical assimilation of women and the problematic notion of “Negroes” was not recognized within all contexts as a metaphorical one, but was rather interpreted as a true similarity since the comparison was based on statistical, and therefore “scientific,” foundations.13 Other case studies critically analyzed the “information” metaphor, which was transposed during the 1950s from physics and cybernetics to molecular biology.14 Finally, similar observations were made in the field of international relations, where metaphors, adopted especially from the field of game theory, proved particularly influential.15 All of these case studies have in common that they show how metaphors, adopted from a wide variety of contexts, can intervene in an active way in shaping knowledge and politics. The choice of vocabulary is in other words rarely innocent, especially because metaphors effectively transpose political convictions from one context to another. The great diversity of laboratory metaphors encountered within the Antarctic context, I argue, merit close scrutiny. Especially the master metaphor of the so-called natural laboratory (which is in some way the Antarctic equivalent of the “information” metaphor in biology) helps clarify some historical and epistemological implications by paradoxically combining nature, or the “natural,” with the highly constructed, the laboratory. In particular, close analysis of the “natural laboratory” may advance our understanding why the popular distinction between laboratory sciences on the one hand and field sciences on the other represents within the Antarctic context, especially since the Cold War, a problematic separation.

From the “Laboratory of Nature” to the “Natural Laboratory” Considering certain regions of nature as specific or even “natural” laboratories is an invention that arguably goes back to the age of the Enlightenment. Denis Cosgrove, for example, claimed that the identification of marginal places as experimental environments is a fundamental characteristic of modern science, exemplified most notably with the localization of astronomical observatories atop high mountains, a tradition that can be followed right up to the more recent “testing” of atomic bombs on “remote” Pacific islands.16 It was precisely within the context of astronomy that the metaphor of the “laboratory of Nature” was coined by Swiss naturalist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740–99).17 A passionate scientific explorer of mountainous regions, Saussure introduced the term in his preliminary discourse of Voyages dans les Alpes, insisting on the very specificity of mountains, claiming that “all the phenomena of general Physics are revealed there with a greatness and a majesty.”18

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Three aspects of Saussure’s travel account can help define the heuristic implications of this founding metaphor of the “laboratory of Nature.” First, Saussure successfully attached qualities such as purity to the mountain. Mountains represented what one could henceforth call a “natural” state, a pure and immaculate milieu.19 Second, the fact of being at high altitude allows for a global overview, the privileged point of view in establishing a “Theory of this Globe.”20 Mountains allow, in other words, objects of knowledge that cannot be observed elsewhere to become visible if certain material practices are closely followed, such as keeping a systematic agenda of the observations.21 Third, the metaphor points at the conception of mountainous regions as a reduced model of the whole earth, a true “microcosm.”22 This notion relies not only on an analogy between latitude and altitude but also on the emergence of a new type of field science, famously promoted half a century later by Alexander von Humboldt, linking a great number of scientific disciplines from geology to meteorology and botany, all united in one whole “cosmic globality.”23 Saussure’s mountain treaty represents therefore an early attempt to establish many important codified efforts—which would become commonplace only during the nineteenth century’s “laboratory revolution”—more or less effectively within “nature,” which meant in his case in a perilous, cold, and challenging environment.24 This transposition had obviously important consequences for what would have to be considered henceforth as “nature” or as “laboratory.” On the one hand, Saussure’s metaphor of the “laboratory of Nature” may be read in a literal way.25 Nature, as an autonomous actor, produces out of itself large-scale experiments, and it requires solely the presence of the naturalist-explorer and his instruments to reveal “new truths” about the globe.26 On the other hand, Saussure’s metaphor may also be understood as a “natural laboratory,” whereas “natural” would refer in this case to the fact that one may encounter “naturally” in the mountain milieu physical conditions that would otherwise have to be laboriously reproduced in an artificial way within the confines of a laboratory. In this second reading, mountains, and one may add for the twentieth century the polar regions, the abysses of the ocean, and even outer space, all qualify as what Karin Knorr-Cetina has labeled an “enhanced environment” where scientists may observe under more or less controlled conditions specific physical aspects that are produced in a “natural” (meaning spontaneous) way.27 In other words, instead of reproducing nature within the confines of laboratory walls, it could be equally or even more convenient and appropriate to introduce key aspects of the laboratory to the “natural” environment. Up to here, I have deliberately avoided using the notion of the “field,” since here again, one must be cautious of the vocabulary employed in order to steer clear of anachronisms. As Robert Kohler has argued, the dichotomy between the “laboratory” and the “field” was only established during the mid-nineteenth

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century during the laboratory revolution, when the very notions of “laboratory” and “field” became mutually defining.28 I argue that with the powerful rise of laboratory culture toward the end of the nineteenth century, the metaphor of the “laboratory of Nature,” strongly attached to the naturalist tradition, started to fade and its intellectual twin brother, the metaphor of the “natural laboratory,” started to become commonplace. Metaphors and their interpretation have, in other words, their own historicity, and employing the metaphor of the “natural laboratory” therefore makes sense only since the laboratory revolution. However, its origins are closely linked to the naturalist tradition and a specific environmental setting: the mountain. Yet many of those characteristics, as we shall see now, were successfully transposed to other “perilous” and “remote” regions, most notably Antarctica, that caught global scientific and political attention especially during the 1950s.

Antarctica as Unique Site for Scientific Investigation Although the differentiation between the laboratory sciences on the one hand and the field sciences on the other was certainly a fruitful distinction, more recent developments especially since the 1950s in fields such as ecology, biology, and the earth sciences invite us to rethink the adequateness of such a distinction.29 One of my aims is to show that within the context of the twentieth century, one has to consider Antarctica, and in some ways also the deep sea and outer space, as places where main properties of the laboratory sciences and the field sciences intimately merge. At the core of these geographies, we are confronted with places that are always both: “the where and [the] what of study.”30 The profound interrelationship and interconnectedness of the actual scientific working environment and the objects of study is clearly a strong sign for the problematic nature of a sharp distinction between the laboratory and the field. As a general characteristic of “extreme” places, it is also a more accurate account of the very nature of those “marginal” and “extreme” geographies that become visible especially during the Cold War period. This point can clearly be made in the context of Antarctic science, where the complex machinery of logistics and the highly specialized knowledge of techniques and infrastructures of survival are very difficult to separate from the strategies and technologies of scientific knowledge production. Here again, a closer look at the vocabulary can be helpful, since it is indeed a very peculiar gesture to associate the “natural” world with the laboratory. In fact, at closer inspection the metaphor of the “natural laboratory” reveals itself as an antinomy, since no scientific observation would be possible without the establishment and maintenance of a long chain of complex and costly logistics (which in many cases is carried out, for obvious reasons, by military personnel). Only

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the deployment of highly sophisticated infrastructures of life-support systems allows therefore for both, the survival of the staff and the use of fragile instrumentation. Although the laboratory revolution gave rise to a culture of universal values in the sense that results and findings are supposed to be universally replicable—an insofar inherently placeless knowledge—it has become more and more evident that the actual physical location of various observing sites determines the nature and therefore also the very success of scientific observations. A telling example is the vibrant field of ice coring, as studied by sociologist Morgan Jouvenet, where massive logistics mobilized within the field, as well as between the laboratories and the Antarctic continent, are key to scientific success.31 Yet once the ice cores are extracted, flown or shipped back to the home countries, and cut up and chemically analyzed in the laboratories, the published results appear highly purified. Indeed, the field is mentioned only in the form of geographical and temporal coordinates, despite the fact that practically all researchers describe the actual field experience as something crucial to both their own mind-set and the building of a scientific community. Ice core science strives, in other words, for the production of universal, placeless knowledge, yet most of the results are not part of the usual legitimacy framework of laboratory science. Indeed, because of the complex logistics involved as well as the important financial needs mobilized, usually none of the experiments are reproduced. Thus, ice cores are rarely re-extracted at the same site. Moreover, during the chemical analysis in the laboratory, the sample is necessarily lost, making a reproduction of the experiment impossible. The physical location on the Antarctic continent can also play out in other important ways. For instance, within the atmospheric sciences, it led to the important discovery of Antarctic stratospheric ozone depletion. Published in 1985 by atmospheric researchers of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS, a case that will not be further discussed here, although it gave rise, as I have shown elsewhere, to another important metaphor, the so-called Antarctic ozone hole), the discovery depended at least in part on the unique location of BAS’s observation hut at Halley Bay, incidentally located below a region of greatly diminished stratospheric ozone at the time.32 The legitimacy of the British findings in Antarctica relied, however, also in a fundamental way on the trustworthiness assigned to the observation instrument employed, the Dobson spectrophotometer, which regularly had to be calibrated against a standard instrument under highly controlled, laboratory-like conditions.33 As both cases show, this complex interaction of fundamental elements from both sides of the “border zone” (mobilizing elements from the field sciences and the lab sciences) points to the fact that research conducted in Antarctica relies on fundamentally unique scientific sites with specific forms of social organization, scientific knowledge production, and scientific and political legitimization.34

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As I will argue in the following section, these characteristics came to bear especially in the case of the establishment of Antarctica as a “space laboratory” during the early 1960s.

Antarctica as Space Laboratory One of the most interesting examples to illustrate the rich potential of Antarctic laboratory visions and their diverse implications for scientific research is NASA’s attempt during the Cold War to establish Antarctica as a veritable space laboratory. In 1964, members of the Space Sciences Laboratory, an important branch of the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) directed by the so-called father of the American space program, Wernher von Braun, contacted NSF’s United States Antarctic Research Program (USARP) to obtain more information on the nature of the Antarctic program. More precisely, they requested information on the planning of various missions, logistical aspects, security measures, known effects of confinement, engineering considerations concerning life-support systems, and international cooperation.35 The result of these early inquiries and the growing interest of the space community in polar research was an invitation, proffered by Philip Smith, the field planning coordinator at NSF of USARP, to visit several scientific bases on the Antarctic continent.36 In January 1967, less than two and a half years before the famous Apollo 11 moon landing, five eminent members of the US space program set foot on the icy continent for a weeklong visit of seven Antarctic stations, the dry valleys, and several historical sites, such as Ernest Shackleton’s hut and a shelter and provisions depot erected in 1911 by Robert Scott’s party at Cape Evans on Ross Island before their fateful journey to the South Pole (see figure 8.1).37 Wernher von Braun and Ernst Stuhlinger, both from MSFC, arrived on New Years Day 1967 in Christchurch, New Zealand, to meet up with their colleagues Robert Gilruth and Maxime Faget of the Manned Spacecraft Center (based in Houston), as well as with Edwin Goodale, the local representative of USARP, and their host Philip Smith. On 3 January 1967, the group finally left Christchurch (without Goodale) with a military airlift to McMurdo Sound on the Antarctic continent.38 This visit would be of only marginal or anecdotal interest were it not for the important reasons that justified this highly exclusive tour. By letting their arguably most valuable personnel travel to Antarctica, NASA’s associate administrators Robert Seamans and George Mueller expressed their high interest in the reconciliation of the two main directors, Wernher von Braun and Robert Gilruth, both with strong, not to say conflicting personalities.39 This experiment of what psychologists would call forced socialization proved rather

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Figure 8.1. The father of the US space program Wernher von Braun at the geographical South Pole in January 1967.

Photo: NASA, no copyright.

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successful, however, at least for the time of the visit. That the Antarctic continent can be most appropriate for that type of experiment is exemplified by the fact that it may be perceived as a place, much like outer space, where strategies of mutual understanding coincide with strategies of survival. The perceived potential of using Antarctica as a space laboratory is best documented in numerous reports and accounts that most of the participants published in various journals upon their return to the United States from down South.40 They show that at the height of the space race, Antarctica was identified as a suitable testing ground and useful model to learn about lunar bases and possible Mars colonization. As Ernst Stuhlinger, the director of MSFC’s Space Sciences Laboratory succinctly put it, “Very simply, the four of us wanted to go to Antarctica because this was as close to lunar conditions as we could get here on Earth.”41 Stuhlinger’s conclusion mobilizes one of the oldest and most persistent Antarctic motives, the analogy between Antarctica and outer space, a trope that can be traced back in fictional literature to early nineteenth-century Antarctic utopias.42 The Antarctic analogy gained considerable currency—along with a fundamental new meaning—within juridical debate at the dawn of the space age.43 This development was paralleled by numerous disciplines that picked up on other forms of the Antarctic analogy, most notably the early American space community, which saw in Antarctica a model for space exploration. That the Antarctic environment could emerge as a lunar analogue or as a simplified model of space exploration has diverse historical reasons, and the laboratory vision of Antarctica as a space laboratory evolved all along the Cold War. Yet one event in particular shaped the way the Antarctic continent would be perceived in the immediate aftermath of World War II: a U.S. Navy maneuver code-named Operation Highjump.

Cold War Infrastructures and Logistics The U.S. Navy’s Operation Highjump (1946–47), the biggest logistics operation ever held by a single country in Antarctic history, had proved that large military operations can be successfully held under even extremely harsh environmental conditions. With the operation involving forty-seven hundred naval and marine personnel, thirteen ships, and twenty-three aircraft, no individual expedition sent to Antarctica has ever demanded similar complex logistical achievements.44 With days becoming shorter in the North and ice conditions treacherous in Greenland, the US Navy turned to Antarctica so as not to lose any time in testing its polar military equipment and training its military personnel.45 By staging the large-scale military exercise down South, the Navy

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benefited also from a far less controversial setting, avoiding the potential geopolitical conflict that could easily arise in the North.46 Although aerial photography and cartography figured among the operation’s high-priority objectives, the actual geopolitical aim was not so much establishing the cartographic basis for an Antarctic claim—since this would have involved leaving other strategic areas under the exclusive control of other countries—but rather demonstrating that large-scale military operations were viable and that they would allow in principle for a US military control of the entire continent.47 Logistics, in other words, figured at the very heart of the early American geopolitical Cold War strategy for the Antarctic region, and it is precisely for the same reason that the Antarctic region attracted considerable interest from the American space community. Wernher von Braun had already picked up the idea of modeling space travel on Antarctic expeditions while writing in the late 1940s the manuscript of his famous “Marsprojekt.”48 The great Antarctic expeditions and especially the most recent Operation Highjump inspired his visions of future Mars exploration and space travel in general. The same role of Antarctica as a reduced model for space travel resurfaced in several reports after NASA’s gathering at the South Pole. Rodney Johnson (from NASA’s Manned Mission Program) and Philip Smith (NSF) suggested in two reports they coauthored that one could model the entire space program on the US Antarctic Program, very much in the way Wernher von Braun believed that “Antarctic activities offer lessons for the whole procedure of space exploration.”49 Operation Highjump was during the early Cold War period clearly the absolute reference line for any American large-scale exploration initiative. However, contrary to IGY, which was staged ten years later, the operation’s success was not mainly due to scientific advancements. Aerial photography, one of the mission’s highest priorities, had missed its ambitious goal, with only a quarter of the territory mapped as originally planned. Half of those photographs lacked even ground control, an indispensable aspect for accurate cartography. However, at least eighteen new mountain ranges were discovered, and large parts of the Antarctic coastline could be mapped in the end.50 Paul Siple, designated senior War Department observer and technical adviser to the officer in charge, Admiral Byrd, regretted (as did many other participating scientists) the fact that during Operation Highjump many opportunities for science were lost. His “Antarctic Plan for Scientific Exploration,” issued as one of the last chapters of the Army Observers’ Report of Operation Highjump, therefore urged to move on from “adventurous exploration” and finally begin systematic “scientific exploitation” by organizing joint research “administered by the United Nations Organization” or an “English speaking condominium,” prefiguring later diplomatic developments that would lead to the Antarctic Treaty.51

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It was not fundamental science but more practical and operational aspects that made up the bulk of Operation Highjump’s achievements. A large panoply of locomotion techniques were tested for the first time and used regularly thereafter (see figure 8.2). Icebreakers made their first appearance in Antarctic waters, and airstrips were put in place for large aircraft that were launched from aircraft carriers. Meteorological observations allowed producing twice-daily synoptic weather maps, which were crucial for planning aerial observations such as airborne geological studies of the Antarctic bedrock. Numerous domains profited substantially from this unique large-scale military intervention in Antarctica. Basic knowledge associated in some way or another to moving and especially, as I will show in the following section, maintaining soldiers in extreme cold were in this sense the actual important outcome of the polar exercise. It was, in other words, mainly through the success of engineering, the fact that one could find ad hoc solutions for travel and especially survival in the most forbidding of all continents, that Antarctica could be firmly established during the Cold War as a space laboratory.

Figure 8.2. A bulldozer preparing a path during Operation Highjump to lay Marston matting and facilitate unloading of ships.

Photo: US Navy, no copyright.

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Antarctica as Human Laboratory The general conclusion, which figured in all reports of the NSF-NASA Antarctic delegation, that there was no other continent on earth as close to lunar conditions as Antarctica echoed very well in another domain that was in a particular way closely linked to logistics: medical studies. Already in 1962, two American military psychologists, William Smith and Marshall Jones, found in a comparative study between astronaut candidates and Antarctic personnel that the “Antarctic situation, taken as a whole, is about as similar to the astronauts as we are likely to find on earth.”52 Antarctica, as the (now fading) “last real frontier on Earth,” as Wernher von Braun called it, allowed not only for the transfer of knowledge from one pole to the other (as also effectively demonstrated during Operation Highjump), but the frame of the Cold War permitted also for a large generalization and transferability of Antarctic knowledge to other domains and environmental settings. It meant, with the beginning of what Paul Siple called the “scientific age” in Antarctica, successfully transferring the frontier metaphor from Antarctica to outer space. With the technologies and large-scale logistics since Operation Highjump finally at hand, the complete exploration of the white continent was only a matter of time. With what one could call the “end of terrestrial geography,” a new powerful frontier emerged: outer space.53 As at the beginning of the 1960s medical knowledge on spaceflight conditions was still extremely sparse, scientists had to rely on experiments conducted in so-called analogue environments, such as submarines, simulators, or the polar regions. NASA therefore initiated in the 1960s physiological and psychological studies on the Antarctic continent, exploring the effects of extreme isolation and confinement. Within the American context, this was a research domain of great interest in particular to the US Navy, since psychological knowledge was imperative to establishing selection criteria for submarine personnel. For this reason of expertise and as the main logistics partner in Antarctica, the Navy was also solicited during IGY to establish screening procedures for military and civil personnel. Indeed, the potentially severe effects of confinement and isolation were dramatically experienced during an incident that occurred in the austral winter of 1956 directly preceding IGY. One of the winter staff developed a “frank and florid psychosis,” as the psychologist captain J. E. Nardini, chief of the newly established Navy Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit (NMNRU), later recorded in his official report.54 With the Antarctic base confronted with the problem of the impossibility of an evacuation and in the absence of any adequate tools to separate the sick member from the rest of the group, the working schedule at the base was considerably disrupted by the incident. This potentially dangerous disruption

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Figure 8.3. The main buildings of the Naval Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit (NMNRU) in San Diego, officially established 1 June 1959.

Photo: US Navy, no copyright.

of everyday affairs at Antarctic bases led, with the creation of the NMNRU in June 1959 in San Diego (see figure 8.3), to the establishment of systematic physical and psychological research, standardized screening procedures, and research on selection methods. NASA’s interest in these studies was, since the 1960s, focused on the analysis of physical and especially psychological capacities of astronauts during long-duration spaceflight.55 In Antarctica, a psychopathological incident could prove very dangerous; during long-term space travel, it could mean the potential death of the astronauts and the end of an extremely costly mission. Yet the historical and geopolitical context of analogue studies had radically changed since World War II. As the doyen of Antarctic psychological research Eric Gunderson and his colleague Paul Nelson illustratively declared in 1966, “Knowledge acquired in the Antarctic setting may have application in other unusual or restricted environments, such as radar and tracking stations, longrange nuclear submarines, lunar colonies, orbiting laboratories, or undersea experimental stations.”56 This development shows particularly well that the Antarctic analogy, promoted within the context of the “human laboratory” of scientific research on confinement and isolation, was introduced to avoid failure and “malfunction” of the potentially weakest element: the human actor. Crew selection procedures became therefore, for the simple reason of survival, a key element of Antarctic logistics. In a second step, control had to be gained over the efficiency of personnel working in the confined and isolated environments of the new geographies of the Cold War, ranging from nuclear submarines that were

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hiding in austral waters to radar stations of the 1950s newly established aerial defense line (DEW Line) in Greenland, Alaska, and Canada.57 Space research was neatly integrated in the 1960s into this global American strategy of the conquest of literally all spaces with the help of medical knowledge gained in Antarctica. The military nature of all knowledge acquired in the human laboratory also revealed important tensions. If Antarctica as a reduced model and analogue space allowed the interconnection of multiples spaces, the potentially widespread application of this knowledge exposed a certain confusion regarding the status of the research itself, allowing no more to differentiate clearly between military and civil research. When Eric Gunderson was asked again in 1967 to conduct a study, co-financed by the US Navy and NASA, on “factors of compatibility” at five Antarctic stations, it was pretty clear that his new insights could be transposed to the entire civil and military spectrum of isolated and confined environments that flourished during the Cold War.58

Conclusion Systematic study of environmental impact on people, as conducted within the “human laboratory,” was clearly not new. During the nineteenth century, mountainous regions but also manned balloons figured already as emblematic places of high-altitude research, exposing explorers and scientists to dangerously low levels of oxygen and severe cold.59 However, at the turn of the century, mountaintops started to lose their scientific attractiveness, and considerable attention was starting to be directed toward other “remote” geographies, most notably the seventh continent, which, praised as the “last frontier” on earth, figured as the symbol of the radically unknown, the very last piece of unexplored land nation states could lay their hands on. As we have seen all along this chapter, many key attributes that had made up Saussure’s “laboratory of nature” were transferred during the twentieth century in a highly successful way to the Antarctic region, the new “natural laboratory” of science. As an antonym of what the politician and jurist Thomas Berger has called a “humanized landscape,” Antarctica acquired especially during the 1960s the status of the last untouched and pure continent, the baseline against which global pollution and global environmental changes could be measured.60 In this sense, Saussure’s “theory of the globe” was at the height of the Cold War no longer a question of a synoptic, mountaintop overview, but rather of the Antarctic, polar perspective. The historical basis for this development was the military “conquest” of the Antarctic continent, achieved most visibly during Operation Highjump in 1946–47, with the conclusive demonstration that large-scale logistics could

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maintain military operations in the most extreme of all terrestrial environments. Operation Highjump laid the practical, so to speak engineering basis that opened the seventh continent, most famously during IGY, to systematic scientific research. Antarctica’s “space laboratory” and the closely linked “human laboratory” helped acquiring knowledge within the field for the conquest of all crucial geographies of the Cold War: the deep sea, the polar regions, and outer space. The analogue qualities that were attached to Antarctica relied, however, on the fact that the strategies, technologies, and resources mobilized for surviving in the forbidding environment could no longer be separated from the tools and strategies of knowledge production. Being able to survive in Antarctica meant, at the height of the Cold War, knowing how to survive in all relevant geographies of the Cold War, be it a submarine, a radar station, an underwater habitat, or even a hypothetical lunar outpost. Although similar studies were conducted for instance in Alaska (for example, at the Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory), Antarctica’s remoteness offered a geopolitically less controversial geographical setting.61 Finally, and maybe most importantly, declaring Antarctica as a “natural laboratory” meant that the various limits and barriers that the environment imposed on the scientists represented at the same time a unique opportunity for science itself.

Sebastian Vincent Grevsmühl is CNRS Researcher at the Centre de recherches historiques in Paris. His main area of expertise is in the study of visual cultures and environmental history. His research is inherently interdisciplinary, with publications in different domains, ranging from environmental, cultural, and architectural history, to polar history and space history. His last book, La Terre vue d’en haut. L’invention de l’environnement global, was published by Editions du Seuil in 2014. Most recently, in 2017, he edited a special issue of GEO: Geography and Environment on global environmental images.

Notes 1. Richard S. Lewis, “Introduction: Antarctic Research and the Relevance of Science,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 26, no. 10 (1970): 4. 2. Recent research has, however, shown that prior to the Antarctic conference there was nonetheless considerable opposition to the Soviet Union in joining the Antarctic Treaty negotiations; see Simone Turchetti et al., “On Thick Ice: Scientific Internationalism and Antarctic Affairs,” History and Technology 24, no. 4 (2008). 3. Lewis, “Introduction: Antarctic Research,” 4. 4. The “Antarctic analogy” in international law has its own rich bibliography. One of the most useful starting points is to consult the work of the two legal scholars who coined the notion in Philip C. Jessup and Howard J. Taubenfeld, Controls for Outer Space and the Antarctic Analogy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).

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5. See especially Chris Collis and Klaus Dodds, “Assault on the Unknown: The Historical and Political Geographies of the International Geophysical Year (1957–8),” Journal of Historical Geography 34, no. 4 (2008). 6. See Roger D. Launius’s contribution to this volume. 7. See, for example, Jean Rivolier et al., eds., Man in the Antarctic: The Scientific Work of the International Biomedical Expedition to the Antarctic (IBEA) (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1988), XXV. 8. Jason Davis, “National Geographic Magazine’s portrayals of Antarctica,” in Steps of Foundation of Institutionalized Antarctic Research, ed. Cornelia Lüdecke (Bremerhaven: Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, 2007), 38–39. 9. There are several (more or less arbitrary) definitions of the geographic designation of the “Antarctic region.” I chose to adopt the official definition from Article VI of the Antarctic Treaty. A digital version of the original document from 1959 is accessible (as are many other historical legal documents) on the website of the Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty. Conference on Antarctica, “The Antarctic Treaty,” 1 December 1959. 10. Matthew Farish, “The Lab and the Land: Overcoming the Arctic in Cold War Alaska,” Isis 104, no. 1 (March 2013): 5–6. 11. For discussions in the history of science and allied disciplines, see Adi Ophir and Steven Shapin, “The Place of Knowledge: A Methodological Survey,” Science in Context 4, no. 1 (1991); Crosbie Smith and John Agar, eds., Making Space for Science: Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); David N. Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). For a more recent general overview, but oriented toward cultural studies and sociology, see Jörg Döring and Tristan Thielmann, eds., Spatial Turn: Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2008). 12. Two general historic, political, and social studies that provide important arguments why especially the Arctic may not be considered as being equivalent to the Antarctic are as follows: Peter Beck and Klaus Dodds, Why Study Antarctica?, CEDAR Discussion Paper Series 26 (London: Royal Holloway, University of London, 1998); Stephen J. Pyne, The Ice (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003). Scientists obviously often use the argument of the very uniqueness of the Antarctic region to underline the relevance of their own work. 13. Nancy L. Stepan, “Race and Gender: The Role of Analogy in Science,” Isis 77, no. 2 (June 1986). 14. Especially American scholars have paid close attention to these issues. In molecular biology, for example, biologists did not understand the full implications in adapting the mathematical notion of information developed by Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener; see Lily E. Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000); Evelyn F. Keller, Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Evelyn F. Keller, Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors and Machines (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). On the information metaphor in cybernetics, see Peter Galison, “The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision,” Critical Enquiry 21, no. 1 (1994); see also for a broader overview A. Dahan and D. Pestre, eds., Les science pour la guerre (1949–1960) (Paris: Editions de l’EHESS, 2004).

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15. See Rens van Muenster and Casper Sylvest, eds., The Politics of Globality Since 1945 (New York: Routledge, 2016), xiv–xv. 16. Denis Cosgrove, “Images and Imagination in 20th Century Environmentalism: From the Sierras to the Poles,” in Bipolar, ed. K. Yusoff (London: Arts Catalyst, 2008), 22; on observatories as specific sites of modern science, see Maria Lane, “Astronomers at Altitude: Mountain Geography and the Cultivation of Scientific Legitimacy,” in High Places: Cultural Geographies of Mountains, Ice and Science, ed. D. Cosgrove and V. della Dora (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2009). 17. Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, Voyages dans les Alpes, précédés d’un essai sur l’histoire naturelle des environs de Genève, 4 vols. (Neuchâtel: L. Fauche-Borel, 1779), vol. 1, viii. Some ideas developed in the following passages on Saussure and the mountain draw on the special issue Charlotte Bigg, David Aubin, and Philipp Felsch, eds., “The Laboratory of Nature: Science in the Mountains—Mountains in Science, from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century,” Science in Context 22, no. 3 (2009). 18. Saussure, Voyages dans les Alpes 1, viii. 19. Ibid., ix. 20. Ibid., ii. 21. Ibid., xi. Research notebooks have attracted already some important scholarly attention; see, for example, Frederic L. Holmes, Jürgen Renn and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, eds., Reworking the Bench: Research Notebooks in the History of Science (New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003). 22. See David Aubin, “The Hotel That Became an Observatory: Mount Faulhorn as Singularity, Microcosm, and Macro-Tool,” Science in Context 22, no. 3 (September 2009). 23. Charlotte Bigg, David Aubin, and Philipp Felsch, “Introduction: The Laboratory of Nature—Science in the Mountains,” Science in Context 22, no. 3 (2009): 318. 24. On the institutionalization of laboratory science during the second half of the nineteenth century, see, for example, David Aubin, “Orchestrating Observatory, Laboratory, and Field: Jules Janssen, the Spectroscope, and Travel,” Nuncius 17 (2002). 25. Donald Davidson argues—against Max Black’s so-called interactionist theory of metaphor—that metaphors may only be read in a literal way. Davidson claims that the conventional denotation of a word that is employed in a metaphorical way is the only meaning that counts, which implies that its meaning is no longer a question of semantics, but of pragmatics. His main claim therefore reads,  “Metaphors mean what the words, in their most literal interpretation, mean, and nothing more”; Donald Davidson, “What Metaphors Mean,” Critical Inquiry 5, no. 1 (1978): 32. Although this certainly holds true for many active metaphors, Davidson’s definition is nevertheless too rigid, since the metaphorical significant may itself rely on another context of meaning that has to be incorporated into the analysis. For a critical discussion, see Philipp Sarasin, Geschichtswissenschaft und Diskursanalyse (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), 209–10. 26. Saussure, Voyages dans les Alpes 1, iv. 27. See Karin Knorr-Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 26. 28. Robert Kohler, Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 3, 98–99.

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29. Margaret Pilkington, for example, proposes another distinction and argues that since the 1950s, ecology does not deal with a lab-field border anymore but rather with an experimental-observational border; see Margaret Pilkington, “The Ecologists Very Own Ecotone: Exploring the Lab-Field Border,” Journal of Biogeography 31, no. 3 (March 2004): 516. 30. This analysis was initially proposed by Thomas Gieryn to describe the specific role of the city as a “truth-spot” within the Chicago school in urban studies; see Thomas F. Gieryn, “City as Truth-Spot: Laboratories and Field-Sites in Urban Studies,” Social Studies of Science 36, no. 1 (February 2006): 28. 31. Morgan Jouvenet, “Des pôles aux laboratoires: les échelles de la coopération internationale en paléoclimatologie (1955–2015),” Revue française de sociologie 57, no. 3 (2016): 563–90. 32. Jon Shanklin, interview by Sebastian V. Grevsmühl, British Antarctic Survey, 29 April 2008. Shanklin is the coauthor of the famous Nature paper announcing annual stratospheric ozone depletion above the Antarctic continent; see J. C. Farman, B. G. Gardiner, and J. D. Shanklin, “Large Losses of Total Ozone in Antarctica Reveal Seasonal ClOx/NOx Interaction,” Nature 315, no. 6016 (1985): 207–10. On the ozone hole metaphor, see Sebastian V. Grevsmühl, “Revisiting the ‘Ozone Hole’ Metaphor: From Observational Window to Global Environmental Threat,” Environmental Communication 12, no.1 (2018): 71–83. 33. The case of the ozone hole discovery and especially its visual history is discussed in detail in Sebastian V. Grevsmühl, “The Creation of Global Imaginaries: The Antarctic Ozone Hole and the Isoline Tradition in the Atmospheric Sciences,” in Image Politics of Climate Change: Visualizations, Imaginations, Documentations, ed. B. Schneider and T. Nocke (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014); Sebastian V. Grevsmühl, “A Visual History of the Ozone Hole: A Journey to the Heart of Science, Technology and the Global Environment,” History and Technology 33, no. 3 (2017): 333–44. 34. Contrary to the Arctic, Antarctica is a frozen continent surrounded by sea. The exceptionally harsh environmental conditions, coupled with its remoteness and inaccessibility (especially during austral winter), make it a truly unique site for scientific investigation. Many more reasons are given by Dodds and Beck in their working paper Beck and Dodds, Why Study Antarctica? 35. See Ernst Stuhlinger and Frederick L. Ordway, Wernher von Braun, Crusader for Space: A Biographical Memoir (Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1994), chapter 9.8, “Spacemen in Antarctica,” 266; See also Philip M. Smith, “Lunar Stations: Prospects for International Cooperation,” in Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century, ed. W. W. Mendell (Houston: Lunar and Planetary Institute, 1985). 36. I refer to the interviews conducted by Dian O. Belanger for the Antarctic Deep Freeze Oral History Project; Philip M. Smith, “Interview with Philip M. Smith,” interview by Dian O. Belanger, Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program, Antarctic Deep Freeze Oral History Project, 8 December 1998 (Spec.RG.56.186, 21). 37. See Wernher von Braun, “A Space Man’s Look at Antarctica,” Popular Science 190, no. 5 (May 1967): 200. 38. Famous astronaut James Lovell had also asked for participation, but his request was turned down by NASA administrator Robert Seamans; see Robert Seamans, “Notes for Mr. Webb,” 3 December 1966, in Von Braun, Dr. Wernher, 1952–1977 (NASA His-

230 Sebastian Vincent Grevsmühl

39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

44.

45. 46.

47.

48.

tory Office, HRC 13254, III/C/6). It seems that two other astronauts were granted permission a few years later to travel to Antarctica during a second voyage organized by Philip Smith in January 1970; see Smith, “Interview with Philip M. Smith,” 21. On the motivations of their visit, see also Sebastian V. Grevsmühl, “Antarctique et Espace: fin et suite de la géographie,” Information géographique 74, no. 2 (2010): 120. Von Braun, “A Space Man’s Look at Antarctica”; Ernst Stuhlinger, “Antarctic Research: A Prelude to Space Research,” Antarctic Journal of the United States 4, no. 1 (1969); Ernst Stuhlinger, “A Prelude to Space Research,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 25, no. 3 (1969); Philip M. Smith, “Prospects for International Cooperation on the Moon: The Antarctic Analogy,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 25, no. 7 (1969); Philip M. Smith, “International Cooperation in Antarctica—The Next Decade,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 26, no. 10 (1970); Tillman Durdin, “Antarctic Studies Said to Aid U.S. Space Program Research,” New York Times, 15 January 1967, 87. Stuhlinger, “Antarctic Research,” 2. On early polar utopias, see E. Leane, “Romancing the Pole: A Survey of Nineteenth Century Utopias,” ACH: The Journal of the History of Culture in Australia, no. 23 (2004). See Roger D. Launius’s contribution to this volume. For an analysis of early Antarctic fictional literature as a genre of its own, see Leane, “Romancing the Pole.” For references to the juridical “Antarctic analogy,” see note 4 above. For an overview of the evolution of the Antarctic analogy, see Grevsmühl, “Antarctique et Espace.” Dian O. Belanger, Deep Freeze: The United States, the International Geophysical Year, and the Origins of Antarctica’s Age of Science (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2006), 19–24; see also the account in Byrd’s biography by Lisle A. Rose, Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008). Task Force 68, US Navy, Army Observers’ Report of Operation Highjump (Washington, DC: s.n., 1947), 15. Walter Sullivan, “Antarctica in a Two-Power World,” Foreign Affairs 36, no. 1 (October 1957): 160; see also Gordon E. Fogg, A History of Antarctic Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 166. On US geostrategic strategies, see especially Turchetti et al., “On Thick Ice,” 353. A similar argument was made in Christopher C. Joyner and Ethel R. Theis, Eagle Over the Ice: The U.S. in the Antarctic (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997), 37. The objectives of Operation Highjump are stated at the beginning of the US Army’s report: “systematic long range air exploration” figures as the very first objective; see Task Force 68, Report of Operation Highjump, 1. In a true science and fiction tradition, Wernher von Braun had conceived his project in two complementary parts, a fiction and an accompanying technical report justifying the feasibility of the first. However, only the second, technical part was finally published as Wernher von Braun, Das Marsprojekt: Studie einer interplanetarischen Expedition (Frankfurt am Main: Umschau, 1952); English translation, The Mars Project (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1953). As a distinct literary strategy, this had already been used by the young Kepler while writing his fiction Somnium (1609), which was accompanied by a substantial body of technical footnotes justifying the dream travel to the moon; see Johannes Kepler, Kepler’s Somnium: The Dream, or Posthumous Work on Lunar Astronomy, trans. Edward Rosen (Madison: University of Wis-

Laboratory Metaphors in Antarctic History 231

49.

50. 51. 52. 53.

54.

55.

56.

57.

58. 59.

consin Press, 1967). Von Braun’s Mars Project had a brief revival with NASA’s “90-day report” following George Bush’s Space Exploration Initiative in 1989, yet without any success; Robert Zubrin, Mars on Earth: The Adventures of Space Pioneers in the High Arctic (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2003), 46–49. Philip M. Smith and Rodney W. Johnson, “From the South Pole to the Moon: Parallels in Exploration,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 24, no. 10 (1968); Rodney W. Johnson and Philip M. Smith, “Antarctic Research and Lunar Exploration,” in Advances in Space Science and Technology, vol. 10, ed. F. I. Ordway (New York: Academic Press, 1970); von Braun’s quote was taken from von Braun, “A Space Man’s Look at Antarctica,” 115. Kenneth J. Bertrand, Americans in Antarctica, 1775–1948 (New York: American Geographical Society, 1971), 484–85. See also Belanger, Deep Freeze, 22. Paul Siple, “Antarctic Plan for Scientific Exploration,” in Army Observers’ Report of Operation Highjump, Task Force 68 and US Navy (Washington, DC: s.n., 1947), 324–28. William M. Smith and Marshall B. Jones, “Astronauts, Antarctic Scientists, and Personal Autonomy,” Aerospace Medicine 33 (February 1962). On the so-called end of terrestrial geography, see Grevsmühl, “Antarctique et Espace,” 119. Outer space as “new frontier” emerged at the time, especially in John F. Kennedy’s rhetoric; he used it as early as 1960 when accepting nomination for the presidency. J. E. Nardini and R. S. Herrmann, ”Navy Psychiatric Assessment Program in the Antarctic,” American Journal of Psychiatry 119, no. 2 (August 1962): 97. Nardini was a leading specialist in this field, and he had worked previously on other stressful scenarios, such as war captivity; see J. E. Nardini, “Survival Factors in American Prisoners of War of the Japanese,” American Journal of Psychiatry 109, no. 4 (October 1952); J. E. Nardini, “Psychiatric Concepts of Prisoners of War Confinement,” Military Medicine 127 (April 1962). See, for example, R. Trego et al., Some Determiners of Interpersonal Climate in Relation to Long Distance Space Missions (Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University, 1968); S. B. Sells and R. E. Trego, Normative Studies of Personality Measures Related to Adaptation under Conditions of Long Duration Isolation and Confinement, Final Report, Part I, IBR Technical Report 73-17 (Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University, 1973). E. K. Eric Gunderson and Paul D. Nelson, “Criterion Measures for Extremely Isolated Groups,” Personnel Psychology 19, no. 1 (March 1966): 67. For a similar study, see the technical report E. K. Eric Gunderson, Small Group Structure and Performance in Extreme Environments, Report no. 66-3 (San Diego: Navy Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, 1966). On the Distant Early Warning Line established in the 1950s in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland and climatic laboratories in the United States, see especially Matthew Farish, “Creating Cold War Climates: The Laboratories of American Globalism,” in Environmental Histories of the Cold War, ed. C. Unger and J. R. McNeill (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). E. K. Eric Gunderson, Group Compatibility in Restricted Environments, Report no. 6724, (San Diego: Navy Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, 1967). On high-altitude experiments, see, for example, P. Felsch, “Mountains of Sublimity, Mountains of Fatigue: Towards a History of Speechlessness in the Alps,” Science in Context 22, no. 3 (September 2009); on scientific ballooning in nineteenth-century

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France, see, for example, Sebastian V. Grevsmühl, La Terre vue d’en haut: l’invention de l’environnement global (Paris: Seuil, 2014). 60. The notion of the “humanized landscape” was introduced for the Arctic region in Thomas R. Berger, Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland: The Report of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1988), 40–41. 61. On Alaska, see Farish, “The Lab and the Land.” On the military role of the poles during IGY, see Jacob Hamblin, Arming Mother Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), in particular 90–92.

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Kay, Lily E. Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Keller, Evelyn F. Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. ———. Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors and Machines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Kepler, Johannes. Kepler’s Somnium: The Dream, or Posthumous Work on Lunar Astronomy. Translated by Edward Rosen. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967. Knorr-Cetina, Karin. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Kohler, Robert. Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Lane, Maria. “Astronomers at Altitude: Mountain Geography and the Cultivation of Scientific Legitimacy.” In High Places: Cultural Geographies of Mountains, Ice and Science, edited by D. Cosgrove and V. della Dora, 126–44. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2009. Leane, E. “Romancing the Pole: A Survey of Nineteenth Century Utopias.” ACH: The Journal of the History of Culture in Australia, no. 23 (2004): 147–71. Lewis, R. S. “Antarctic Research and the Relevance of Science.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 26, no. 10 (1970): 2–4. Livingstone, David N. Putting Science in Its Place. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Nardini, J. E. “Survival Factors in American Prisoners of War of the Japanese.” American Journal of Psychiatry 109, no. 4 (October 1952): 241–48. ———. “Psychiatric Concepts of Prisoners of War Confinement.” Military Medicine 127 (April 1962): 299–307. Nardini, J. E., and R. S. Herrmann. “Navy Psychiatric Assessment Program in the Antarctic.” American Journal of Psychiatry 119, no. 2 (August 1962): 97–105. Ophir, Adi, and Steven Shapin. “The Place of Knowledge: A Methodological Survey.” Science in Context 4, no. 1 (1991): 3–21. Pilkington, Margaret. “The Ecologists Very Own Ecotone: Exploring the Lab-Field Border.” Journal of Biogeography 31, no. 3 (March 2004): 516. Pyne, Stephen J. The Ice. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. Rivolier, Jean, R. Goldsmith, D. J. Lugg, and A. J. W. Taylor, eds. Man in the Antarctic: The Scientific Work of the International Biomedical Expedition to the Antarctic (IBEA). New York: Taylor & Francis, 1988. Rose, Lisle A. Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. Sarasin, Philipp. Geschichtswissenschaft und Diskursanalyse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003. Saussure, Horace de. Voyages dans les Alpes, précédés d’un essai sur l’histoire naturelle des environs de Genève. 4 vols. Neuchâtel: L. Fauche-Borel, 1779. Seamans, Robert. “Notes for Mr. Webb.” December 3, 1966. In Von Braun, Dr. Wernher, 1952–1977. NASA History Office, HRC 13254, III/C/6. Sells, S. B., and R. E. Trego. Normative Studies of Personality Measures Related to Adaptation under Conditions of Long Duration Isolation and Confinement. Final Report, Part I, IBR Technical Report 73-17. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University, 1973.

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Shanklin, John. Interview by Sebastian V. Grevsmühl. British Antarctic Survey, 29 April 2008. Siple, Paul. “Antarctic Plan for Scientific Exploration.” In Army Observers’ Report of Operation Highjump, Task Force 68 and US Navy, 324–28. Washington, DC: s.n., 1947. Smith, Crosbie, and John Agar, eds. Making Space for Science: Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Smith, Philip M. “Prospects for International Cooperation on the Moon: The Antarctic Analogy.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 25, no. 7 (1969): 36–40. ———. “International Cooperation in Antarctica—The Next Decade.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 26, no. 10 (1970): 29–32. ———. “Lunar Stations: Prospects for International Cooperation.” In Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century, edited by W. W. Mendell, 717–23. Houston: Lunar and Planetary Institute, 1985. ———. “Interview with Philip M. Smith.” Interview by Dian O. Belanger. Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program, Antarctic Deep Freeze Oral History Project, 8 December 1998. Spec.RG.56.186. Smith, Philip M., and Rodney W. Johnson. “From the South Pole to the Moon: Parallels in Exploration.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 24, no. 10 (1968): 35–37. Smith, William M., and Marshall B. Jones. “Astronauts, Antarctic Scientists, and Personal Autonomy.” Aerospace Medicine 33 (February 1962): 162–66. Stepan, Nancy L. “Race and Gender: The Role of Analogy in Science.” Isis 77, no. 2 (June 1986): 261–77. Stuhlinger, Ernst. “Antarctic Research: A Prelude to Space Research.” Antarctic Journal of the United States 4, no. 1 (1969): 1–7. ———. “A Prelude to Space Research.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 25, no. 3 (1969): 24–27. Stuhlinger, Ernst, and Frederick L. Ordway. Wernher von Braun, Crusader for Space: A Biographical Memoir. Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1994. Sullivan, Walter. “Antarctica in a Two-Power World,” Foreign Affairs 36, no.  1 (October 1957): 154–66. Task Force 68, US Navy. Army Observers’ Report of Operation Highjump. Washington, DC: s.n., 1947. Trego, R., S. B. Sells, J. R. Rawls, and C. N. McGaffey. Some Determiners of Interpersonal Climate in Relation to Long Distance Space Missions. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University, 1968. Turchetti, Simone, Simon Naylor, Katrina Dean, and Martin Siegert. “On Thick Ice: Scientific Internationalism and Antarctic Affairs.” History and Technology 24, no. 4 (2008): 351–76. van Muenster, Rens, and Casper Sylvest, eds. The Politics of Globality Since 1945. New York: Routledge, 2016. von Braun, Wernher. Das Marsprojekt: Studie einer interplanetarischen Expedition. Frankfurt am Main: Umschau, 1952. ———. “A Space Man’s Look at Antarctica.” Popular Science 190, no. 5 (May 1967): 114–16, 200. Zubrin, Robert. Mars on Earth: The Adventures of Space Pioneers in the High Arctic. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2003.

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CHAPTER 9

Cold War Creatures Soviet Science and the Problem of the Abominable Snowman Carolin F. Roeder and Gregory Afinogenov

T

he search for the yeti, or Abominable Snowman, is one of the most famous of fringe obsessions. Although lore and speculation about the existence of “wild men” dates back centuries, it was only in the postwar period that yetis joined UFOs in the mass-cultural roster of shadowy beings imagined to be lurking just outside the limits of the known.1 Unlike its extraterrestrial colleagues, the yeti aroused interest almost exclusively because of its legendary elusiveness; the subject was fascinating because the decisive evidence was always almost, but not quite, within reach. From Asia to Europe and North America, the Abominable Snowman became entrenched in popular cultures around the world. Its function as an extraordinary boundary object, to evoke the concept of Star and Griesemer, explains the perennial interest in the yeti across time and place.2 As the “missing link,” the yeti raised questions of human descent that were universal. But the transnational culture that emerged around the yeti phenomenon relied on local legends to give it context and form. As Canadian Sasquatch, US-American Bigfoot, Nepalese yeti, Chinese yeren, or Mongolian alma, the creature was at the same time geographically constrained and localized.3 In Communist China, paleontology, popular science, and state ideology worked together in nurturing a scientific culture around the yeren, the Chinese version of the yeti. Officially sponsored research into the Chinese wildmen stood in contrast to the pseudoscientific image Bigfoot and its relatives received in America and Europe.4 In the United States and other Western countries, Bigfoot and yeti searches turned into a playground for amateurs, with their own genre of literature—usually a mixture of adventure accounts, personal life stories, pseudoscientific theorizing, and a Bigfoot historiography with different levels of belief. Between the official endorsement of the yeren and the fate of Bigfoot and Sasquatch, a middle ground was to be found in the Soviet Union. There, the “snowman” (snezhnyi chelovek) came to occupy a border zone between science and pseudoscience, with respected scientists weighing in on the creature’s sup-

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port. Whereas in the West the yeti, like other paranormal phenomena, had always been a primarily fringe topic outside of official science, Soviet scientists raised vexing questions about the nature and legitimacy of popular engagement with science as they searched for a proof of its existence. The yeti serves as an example of how in the Soviet Union knowledge was produced that oscillated between high-brow science, popular science, and fringe subculture. In the Soviet case, public interest motivated scientists to lift the snowman out of the realms of folklore into a contested zone where opponents and proponents fought border wars to separate “science” from “pseudo-science,” “knowledge” from “superstition,” and “evidence” from “guesses.”5 Just as the snowman question offered a broad Soviet public the opportunity to engage with scientific institutions, it also gave those institutions an opportunity to investigate the mountainous, inaccessible spaces of Soviet Central Asia from a new perspective. Discovering traces of the yeti required the expertise not only of life-sciences experts but also of ethnographers and anthropologists who would be able to make sense of the snowman from a Marxist perspective. If the hypothetical being was as human as it was nonhuman, its possible existence in Central Asia put into question the whole notion that its spaces were terra nullius—no-man’s-land—as other cold regions were seen by Cold War actors.6 No Academy of Sciences expedition was ever launched to investigate the presence of forest spirits (leshie) near Soviet villages or water spirits (vodianye) in Soviet rivers, but the yeti received official sanction. If, as the editors of this volume have put it, cold regions are “special environments that make political, cultural, scientific, and environmental processes visible in a condensed and place-bound way,” the snowman’s frosty peaks formed a crossroads between state-sponsored scientific culture, transnational Cold War (pseudo)science, and a new vision of Soviet Central Asia.7

Searching for the Soviet Snowman Discussion of the yeti was first provoked in interwar Britain by casual reports from mountaineers in the Himalayas. In 1954, sponsored by the Daily Mail, a British expedition under the leadership of the well-established mountaineer John Hunt returned empty-handed from the Himalayas but received worldwide coverage. Books published by the zoologist Charles Stonor and the journalist Ralph Izzard, both members of the expedition, were soon available in Russian.8 The ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 had already turned the Himalayas into an object of worldwide general interest; the yeti added even more excitement. From early on, the political contingencies of the postwar period shaped discussions about the hairy creature: the boundary object yeti served also as a border object. In the chilly climate of the Cold War, the rush to the

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Abode of Snow evoked reminiscences of the Great Game between Imperial Russia and the British Empire. By the peak of the yeti fad in the late 1950s, mounting press coverage and public interest led numerous enthusiasts from around the world to invest in expeditions to mountainous central Eurasia to locate the yeti and study its way of life. Regional players characterized initial Western explorations into the peaks of the Himalayas in search of the yeti as an unsubtle fig leaf for the geopolitical ambitions of the capitalist bloc. Pravda’s special correspondent Oleg Orestov, writing from Delhi in August 1954, discerned that the “Himalayan fever,” which brought Americans, Japanese, Dutch, Austrians, and even Argentines into the mountains, triggered “legitimate irritation” in the region. Presumably “covered by the US intelligence service and some other dependent countries,” some of the explorers were probably not motivated by scientific curiosity and alpinist endeavors and definitely not by the search for a “snowman,” a creature no one had ever seen before. Espionage against China, Orestov concluded in accord with the Indian press, was likely to be the real objective of the expedition.9 While Orestov scented a US invention, the curiosity of the Soviet public was spurred by British expedition reports. Numerous inquiries about the snowman arrived at the editorial offices of Soviet newspapers and popular magazines. The readers wanted to know what to think about the snowman, what the opinion of Soviet scientists was about the issue, and—most importantly—whether a similar creature could possibly exist on the territory of the Soviet Union. It came as no surprise that the country soon had its first snowman sighting, reported by a hydrologist from the University of Leningrad, Aleksandr Pronin.10 During an expedition in the Pamir mountain range in Tajikistan in August 1957, Pronin claimed he twice encountered a strange creature. The Soviet press, which several months earlier had ridiculed the “sensational clamor” of the American media, was suddenly keen to report on the yeti question. Pronin’s story immediately triggered reactions from members of the scientific community in both the Soviet and foreign press.11 It was due to this surge of public interest, Pronin’s testimony, and the personal engagement of two Soviet academics, geologist Sergei Obruchev and the well-established historian Boris Porshnev, that the presidium of the Academy of Sciences decided to assemble the Special Commission for the Study of the Problem of the Snowman to investigate the topic further. Also invited was Kirill Staniukovich, a botanist from Tajikistan whose main interest was the plant life of high mountain ranges, but also the geography of Central Asia. In 1956, Stanuikovich had had a conversation with the president of the AllUnion Geographical Society, Stanislav Kalesnik, about the legends told by Kyrgyz about Golub-iavan, the Pamir version of the wild man. Despite his ironical tone, Kalesnik became interested in the subject and suggested to write

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an article for the journal of the Geographical Society.12 Staniukovich followed his request and reported on three legends he recorded in the Pamir. In the same issue, an article by Sergei Obruchev was published.13 Staniukovich was appointed to chair the commission; Porshnev and a third academician, biologist Sergei Kleinenberg, were selected as deputy chairpersons. The commission, supported by the presidium, took rapid action and decided to launch an expedition with the aim of proving or refuting the existence of a snowman on Soviet territory. The question remained: where to look for the creature in the vast realms of the Soviet Union? After the commission compiled all available information in a four-hundred-page report, it concluded that the most likely habitat of the yeti was not the Himalayas but the region between the Tian Shan, Pamir, and Mongolia. Assuming that the snowman could have migrated westward from its main realm in the Himalayas into the Pamir range, the commission decided to survey two of the most remote and little researched areas in the Pamir, the Sarezki basin and the river valley of Muk-Su in Tajikistan. However slight the chance was that the creature really existed, the “snowman problem” promised new professional opportunities, a source of funding for research in remote areas, and a welcome diversion. The assumed migration of the yeti into the Pamir also called for cooperation with the USSR’s communist neighbor, China. Despite the accusations of espionage they raised against Western yeti hunters, Chinese scientists themselves had a profound interest in the yeren. The commission therefore exchanged information with the Chinese authorities in the form of reports. Since SinoSoviet relationships were not yet too constrained, the Soviet scientists proposed to initiate a joint expedition with the Chinese Academy of Sciences to survey the Sino-Soviet borderlands. The exchanges on the snowman even received the attention of the foreign press which reported on the collaboration of the “red experts.”14 Although a joint Everest expedition had to be postponed due to the revolt in Tibet, finding the yeti was an official goal of the first Chinese Everest expedition which took place without Soviet participation in 1960.15 The collaborative efforts of the Soviets also included Mongolia, where, according to Mongolian and Soviet claims, bipedal apelike almas roamed through the desert. When the academy was set to launch the expedition, springtime was around the corner. The remote areas of the Pamir were accessible for only a few months, limiting the expedition’s range drastically. Spring was also the season for the “annual hunt” in the Himalayas, as the sarcastic voice of the Times of India put it, when “intrepid explorers, leather-lunged mountaineers and unemployed anthropologists who have spent the winter yawning near their fireplaces suddenly wake up and announce that once again they are off to the Himalayas to chase something which they are not quite sure is there.”16 When the plans

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of the Soviets became known, the commentator in Bombay saw an “international race” going on in the search for the snowman.17 Yet the yeti enthusiasts themselves never framed their search in terms of a rivalry between nations or states. Indeed, they often stressed collaboration more than competition: in the game of exploration, “to be first is part of the excitement,” as the journalist James Morris remarked in 1958.18 Morris, who accompanied the British Everest expedition in 1953, concluded his elegy for the age of exploration with the statement that “the modern adventurer must be a scientist” and that “future journeys of terrestrial exploration will be made by teams of clever and earnest men, backed by governments rather than private societies.”19 In the case of the Soviet expedition, this was entirely correct. Putting a team of that size together was not an easy undertaking, and some Soviet scientists refused to join the search, convinced that the snowman did not exist.20 Nonetheless, the group setting out eastward resembled an “avalanche of experts” that included forty zoologists, archeologists, mountaineers, botanists, and other scientists and received acknowledgment from the foreign press for its scope and preparation.21 Perhaps recalling Morris’s famous coded telegram that informed Queen Elizabeth II of the conquest of Everest, the snowman received the code name “Ivanov”; in case the creature was encountered, telegrams to Moscow would spark no uproar in the press.22 The Times of India correspondent remarked on the Russian expedition joining the “usual American and Japanese contingents” that “the cold war [had] made the great nations of the world so icy that they are numb to the chilling spectacle of running after an inoffensive will-o’-the-wisp,” adding that “Soviet intrusion into what previously had been considered a purely bourgeois pursuit only goes to show that as regards chasing chimeras is concerned, there is little difference between the cold war protagonists.”23 Yet, as ridiculous as the author regarded the chase for the yeti, he saw “something symbolic” in this “sudden oneness of mind” and linked the yeti fever to the space fever. As another article, probably by the same author, stated: “The irony of it is that the only thing that has ever united English, American and Russian teams in a single-minded pursuit is the desire to chase a will-o’-the-wisp and a chimera.”24 In the United States, the snowman had been indeed inducted into mainstream culture. The American Natural History Book Club advertised the snowman as part of the knowledge that “must—from now on—be the property of every informed American man and woman.”25 In Popular Science and Scientific American, the Abominable Snowman received his treatment, too.26 Popular Science, founded in 1872 and once a platform for Darwin, Huxley, Pasteur, and other eminent scientists, had changed its focus to technology, automotive, and mechanics already before World War I. Yet, between do-it-yourself advice and car reviews (the magazine was clearly geared to a male audience), the Himalayas found a prominent place.

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Snowman Science in the Public Eye In the Soviet Union, the yeti phenomenon coincided with a particularly largescale push to promote popular engagement with science, one that was closely linked to the Cold War. Already in pre-revolutionary Russia, popular science publications like Priroda had played a significant part in popularizing science.27 Since the 1920s, popular science magazines had a well-established readership, mostly urban, with an enormous interest in topics such as space travel, global exploration, and astronomy. As Asif Siddiqi has shown, audiences captured by the thrill of space travel formed networks of aerospace enthusiasts that forged connections with counterparts abroad—particularly in Germany—and staged regular tests of rocket designs. By the 1930s and 1940s, participants in these networks were recruited into state-led initiatives, often military in nature, and eventually ended up among the key figures of the Soviet space program.28 Soviet popular science, in short, was closely linked to official scientific and other state institutions; members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, for instance, published regularly in popular science journals.29 These links were strengthened in the late 1950s, as the post-Stalin leadership sought for ways to increase the pace of scientific progress and reduce the “distance between mental and physical labor”—key aspects of the Soviet attempt to outperform the United States technologically, economically, and diplomatically. The spread of science and technology came to play a key role in the 1958–62 development of the new Communist Party Program, while more and more young people were funneled into scientific careers.30 The popular-scientific journalism that made the yeti search a “fashionable topic” was a crucial part of this process.31 In 1959, the leading technical magazine for youth, Tekhnika—molodezhi, asked readers to send in anything they heard about this matter: “All your observations will be of use for science. . . . The secret will be exposed earlier if the broad masses of our naturalists, regional specialists, experienced people, and young romantics will take part in its solution.”32 A decade later, Znanie—sila, another major popular-science publication, reprinted a series of American reports together with a comment by Porshnev. The Soviet professor condemned the “illusion” that what snowman studies needed was a “sensational piece of luck,” a decisive piece of evidence. “No, the march of science is both statelier and more modest. Knowledge becomes accumulated and deepened, old evidence is joined to new, its reliability grows.”33 Hence the yeti question became an opportunity to inculcate old-fashioned scientific virtues, in contrast to the sensationalist chase for a perennially doubtful photograph or film clip. Nauka i religiia, an atheist journal published by the Soviet Union’s leading popular science society, used the yeti question to debate the value of folk beliefs in scientific investigation. On one side, a correspondent dismissed the

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yeti rumors as Caucasian superstition; on the other, Marie-Jeanne Koffmann, the French-born doctor of the Academy of Sciences expedition, defended the legitimacy of local observers and mustered evidence in support of the snowman’s scientific plausibility.34 Unsurprisingly, the academy expedition returned home in 1958 with neither a living specimen of a snowman nor any other evidence of its existence; as far as the academy and the special commission were concerned, the question of the yeti had been conclusively resolved. The result of this, however, was not a resolution but a renewed debate. At first, the academy—and especially Porshnev and Obruchev, the leading promoters of yeti research—struggled to impose a regime of scientific authority on the subject, marginalizing amateurs interested in the topic. For the academicians, the search for the yeti was part of the mission of science, to venture out and fill in the blank spots of human knowledge.35 The academy’s co-optation and subsequent rejection now raised serious questions about the continuing status of yeti research as a legitimate object of scientific inquiry. But not everyone agreed that proper procedure had in fact been followed. Koffmann, for one, argued from her own experience that the expedition had been misdirected and mismanaged by Staniukovich.36

Making and Unmaking the Scientific Snowman Despite the ongoing discussion, once the Academy of Sciences had decided that the snowman did not exist, the official academic journals were closed to new yeti research. Relocating to the Darwin Museum in Moscow in 1960, a small group of “yeti activists,” including Porshnev and Koffmann, established the Relict Hominoid Research Seminar, which “the authorities considered . . . a harmless diversion”and continued their research at the outskirts of the Soviet science community.37 Pëtr Smolin, the chief curator of the museum, had proposed the term “relict hominoid” to denote what Porshnev thought was a relic of ancient, yet nonhuman primates. In 1963, the academy agreed to publish 180 copies of Porshnev’s monograph The Present State of the Question of Relict Hominoids, in which he synthesized collected documentation and his theories. Boris Porshnev’s objective went beyond finding a proof of the existence of an ape-human creature. Instead, he aimed to find a place for the yeti in a broad theory of human development, using the problem of the snowman as a way to pinpoint the line between human beings and proto-human “troglodytes.” The cornerstone, for Porshnev, was Friedrich Engels’s idea that production relations—in other words, conscious social labor—were responsible for the emergence and differentiation of humans as a species. Following Engels, Porshnev distinguished conscious social labor from instinctive labor, which included not only elementary animal behavior but even the sociality

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and tool-making behavior of bees or beavers. The snowman, then, was a surviving proto-human, resembling Homo sapiens biologically but unable to engage in labor properly speaking. His most thorough explanation of this theory would eventually come in On the Beginning of Human History, published posthumously in 1974, which did not even mention the snowman but left a highly suggestive space between the lines.38 Porshnev’s proposed “revolution” could have ignited a small-scale science war. Yet what the Times called a “Soviet solution to the snowman” was far from being universally accepted among Soviet scientists.39 The silence with which the science community met their ideas was even more detrimental than public ridicule. Porshnev’s article entitled “Is a scientific revolution in primatology possible today?” was published in Voprosii Filosofii in 1966 and offered to initiate a debate—which never happened.40 Yeti enthusiasts, either amateurs or professional scientists, thus faced two opponents: those scientists who actively argued against the hypothesis, and a far larger group that regarded the issue as outside of the realm of science and either shunned every discursive engagement or simply did not pay attention to it. The yeti supporters were so small in number and operated at such an extreme fringe of science that the term “pseudoscience,” a term that in the Cold War was frequently used to discredit the other side, was not even worth employing.41 Once eager to define the yeti as a subject of official science, Porshnev, in 1968, mustered American, British, Mongolian, and even eighteenth-century Swedish evidence in support of the value of yeti scholarship and pitted the readership of “newspapers and popular magazines,” in which yeti sightings had become the “property of all,” against professional scientists who refused to take the issue seriously.42 When Porshnev and Smolin passed away in 1972 and 1975, respectively, Dmitrii Bayanov took over his place as a director “out of a philosophical interest in the nature and destiny of man.”43 The members of the second generation called themselves, since the 1970s, “hominologists” and their activity “hominology.” Soviet hominology was matched by its Western counterpart of “cryptozoology,” a term proposed by the French-Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans in his 1955 book On the Track of Unknown Animals for the “science of hidden animals.”44 The initial Soviet yeti frenzy was an example of how a passive but curious lay audience enrolled scientists who, for their own part, relied on an alliance with the public for their own ends.45 In the 1970s, this relationship changed. What used to be an activity pursued by a handful of scientists operating at the very borders of what was accepted as scientific research became a pursuit in which amateurs increasingly became involved. The activists, however, were always aiming at “re-engaging the scientific community” and raising funds for their fieldwork. Without a source of official funding, the Pamir was out of reach for serious expeditions. The yeti enthusiasts therefore directed

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their efforts toward the Caucasus and privately financed their research.46 Easier and cheaper to reach, the Caucasian mountains still offered remoteness enough for a potential snowman habitat and plenty of folkloric tales to feed imaginations. At the end of the 1970s, another yeti activist from the Relict Hominoid Research Seminar, Igor Tatsl, brought Soviet Central Asia, especially Tajikistan, back into focus. Eventually, the Soviet “masses” became involved in the search. In summer of 1980, three groups of a total of 120 volunteers from across the Soviet Union, but mainly Ukraine, including students, workers, engineers, and teachers, took part in “snowman fieldwork.”47 While the Soviet scientific community refrained from commenting on the two “sightings,” Tatsl reported, publicity in and outside the Soviet Union was guaranteed.48 Growing interest in the occult and the supernatural also fed these activities.49 With the extension of the activist community to the Soviet Union came an extension of the alleged snowman habitat. In the 1980s, reports of sightings from Western Russia suddenly appeared.50 The yeti had finally become an allUnion phenomenon. Occasionally, Soviet scientists still felt obliged to debunk snowman theories. Vadim Ranov, corresponding member of the Tajik Academy of Science and a well-established archeologist and explorer of the Central Asian mountain regions, stated that “the numerous Russian expeditions to track down the yeti were just a lot of nonsense” and so were the theories of the scientists justifying them. His talk, delivered in Dushanbe, made it to the front page of the Times. “Yeti Fails to Live Up to the Ideals of Communism,” the heading read on 9 April 1984.51 “Neither the coming session of the Supreme Soviet, nor the Soviet-Indian space shot, and definitely not the Five-Year-Plan” were able “to compete for Soviet attention with the shocking revelation that the Abominable Snowman does not exist,” smirked Richard Owen, the Times’ bureau chief in Moscow. Ranov’s statement, delivered “cold-bloodedly” in Dushanbe, was accompanied with “withering fire” with which he refuted the claims of the enthusiasts on the grounds that it would be against the logic of human evolution to assume “that a group of Neanderthals suddenly forgot how to make stone tools and returned to living in the wild.” Owen jokingly remarked that the yeti proponents were hence under fire because their research subject was “ideologically unacceptable,” since “mankind, in the Marxist-Leninist view, is progressing onward and upward towards the communist ideal, and the yeti would be an aberration.” Yet, this sweeping statement, which derided the Soviet public, science, and Marxism altogether, contained some truth. Probably without knowing, he allured to the fact that Porshnev had indeed tried to construct a Marxist theory of evolution based on his beliefs of relict hominoids. Not far-fetched was Owen’s suggestion that the Russian interest in the occult

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and supernatural might exist “because the Soviet daily routine is dull and the propaganda is tedious.”52

Conclusion The yeti was a cultural phenomenon that was born and nurtured in the Cold War. Its emergence created the transnational networks that despite the bifurcation of the international sphere brought together a small number of enthusiasts across the globe who relied on the support of a receptive public and the institutional network of popular science media. But even as the phenomenon bridged certain Cold War divides, the Soviet fascination with the snowman was also a vivid expression of what set the Soviet Union apart. The mobilization of professional and lay audiences for the search aligned with official postwar goals, which placed the creation of a scientific mass culture at the forefront of their social vision. Moreover, when Porshnev and his colleagues tried to give the snowman a place in mainstream anthropology, their efforts were given their impetus by the ideological significance of human origins for MarxismLeninism: if conscious social labor was what made human beings human, a society speaking in the name of workers could lay claim to being rooted in distant history as well as utopian visions of the future. No less importantly, Soviet yeti researchers focused their work on peripheral areas of the Union rather than on distant colonial possessions; in doing so, they, like Chinese and Mongolian yeti hunters, gave the project a national and nation-building dimension not all their counterparts in the West shared. The Soviet snowman carried a red passport, even if the species to which it belonged was a fundamentally transnational one. After the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the social anxieties around progress, civilization, and human descent that were reflected in the cultural image of the yeti did not disappear but ensured that the creature was endowed with lasting appeal. The 1990s saw a wave of new interest in mysticism, the paranormal, and a rise of doubtful scientific theories that urged the Russian government to establish yet another commission—not one to find the snowman, but to fight pseudoscience. In October 2011, an “International Yeti Conference,” organized by Igor Burtsev, took place in the Siberian city of Tashtagol and received worldwide attention.53 With the help of new media technology, it became easier than ever to feed the interested public with new stories of a legend that was global in its very roots. A fan website proclaimed that “in an astonishing display of international cooperation, U.S. and Russian scientists have even agreed to share secret Cold War evidence on the legendary creatures.”54 Twenty years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, legends of “Cold War evidence” create a new atmosphere of secrecy and excitement of a

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phenomenon that in fact had motivated people during the Cold War to form transnational ties outside of officialdom and state control. Carolin F. Roeder is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She received her PhD in modern European history from Harvard University in 2017. Her current book project explores conceptions and experiences of vertical space through a transnational history of climbing and mountaineering in the twentieth century. Gregory Afinogenov is assistant professor of Imperial Russian history at Georgetown University. His current book project, Spies and Scholars: Clandestine Encounters between Russia, China, and the West, studies the role of intelligence gathering in Russo-Chinese relations in the long eighteenth century.

Notes 1. An authoritative work on naturalism and classification of “unknown” animals is Harriet Rietvo, The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). For discussions on the Loch Ness monster, see Henry Bauer, “Society and Scientific Anomalies: Common Knowledge about the Loch Ness Monster,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 1, no. 1 (January 1987); Peter Dendle, “Cryptozoology in the Medieval and Modern Worlds,” Folklore 117, no. 2 (August 2006). On the cultural history of the wildmen and other monsters, see also Marjorie M. Halpin and Michael M. Ames, eds., Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Records and Modern Evidence (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980). 2. Boundary objects, as defined by Star and Griesemer, are concrete or abstract objects that can be adapted to the needs of various social actors while maintaining a recognizable core identity. Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39,” Social Studies of Science 19, no. 3 (August 1989). 3. In this contribution, we use “yeti” and “snowman” to describe the entire phenomenon. In the English language, “Bigfoot” and “Sasquatch” are usually spelled with a capital letter, “yeti” with a lowercase. Though it cannot be discussed here further, it is of interest for the cultural history of the yeti, whether the creature is imagined as just being one or an entire species. 4. Sigrid Schmalzer, The People’s Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Very few scholarly books treat the cultural phenomenon of Bigfoot from an independent angle, among them David J. Daegling, Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America’s Enduring Legend (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004); Joshua B. Buhs, Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Michael McLeod, Anatomy of a Beast: Obsession and Myth on the Trail of Bigfoot

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5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero, Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). On the problematic category of popular science, see Roger Cooter and Stephen Pumfrey, “Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture,” History of Science 32, no. 2 (September 1994), and Andreas W. Daum, “Varieties of Popular Science and the Transformations of Public Knowledge: Some Historical Reflections,” Isis 100, no. 2 (2009). See Ingo Heidbrink’s contribution to this volume. See Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma’s introduction to this volume. For the original English editions, see Charles Robert Stonor, The Sherpa and the Snowman (London: Hollis & Carter, 1955); Ralph Izzard, The Abominable Snowman Adventure (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1955). O. Orestov, “Gimalaiskaia likhoradka,” Pravda, 10 August 1954. “Was It a ‘Snowman’? (Izvestiia, January 18),” Current Digest of the Soviet Press 10, no. 4 (1958); “Facts and Guesses (Komsomolskaia Pravda, January 18),” ibid. “Russians Doubt ‘Snowman,’” New York Times, 3 February 1958; “Soviet Check Fails to Find ‘Snowman,’” Washington Post and Times Herald, 3 February 1958. E. Murzaev, preface to V gorakh Pamira i Tian’-Shania, by Kirill V. Staniukovich (Moscow: Mysl’, 1977). Kirill V. Staniukovich “Golub-Iavan. Svedenia o ‘snezhnom chelovekom’ na pamire,” Izvestiia Vsesoiuznogo geograficheskogo obshchestva 89, no. 4 (1957); Sergei V. Obruchev, “Novye materialy o ‘snezhnom cheloveke’ (Ieti),” Izvestiia Vsesoiuznogo geograficheskogo obshchestva 89, no. 4 (1957). “Red Expert Says Prehistoric Apemen Still Roam Central Mongolia Desert,” Washington Post and Times Herald, 12 July 1958; “Apemen May Still Exist,” Times of India, 11 July 1958; “Russ Believe Abominable Snowmen Real,” Los Angeles Times, 16 November 1958; “Soviet Scientists Trail ‘Snowman’: Evidence Is Growing That Legend of Man-Beast Is True, Team Reports,” New York Times, Special, 16 November 1958; Boris Porshnev, “The Mystery of the Snow Man Will Be Uncovered” [in Chinese], an interview by the correspondent of the newspaper, Renmin Ribao, 18 April 1959; E. Kleinenberg and Boris Porshnev, “Studies in the Soviet Union in Connection with the Snow Man” [in Chinese], Huanmin Jibao, 11 February 1959. Schmalzer, The People’s Peking Man, 83; Marie-Jeanne Koffmann, “Reflections on the Possible Survival of a Population of Relict Hominoids in the Caucasus,” in In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman: A Record of Investigation, by Dmitri Bayanov (Moscow: Crypto-Logos, 1996); see also Eva Maurer, “Cold War, ‘Thaw’ and ‘Everlasting Friendship’: Soviet Mountaineers and Mount Everest, 1953–1960,” International Journal of the History of Sport 26, no. 4 (2009). “Abominable?,” Times of India, 1 February 1959. “Race to Find the Yeti: Three Nations to Send Expeditions,” Times of India, 1 February 1959. James Morris, “The Next ‘Everest’ for Man to Conquer,” New York Times, 13 July 1958. Ibid.

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20. Kirill V. Staniukovich, Po sledam udivitel’noi zagadki. Iz dnevnika ekspeditsii (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1965), 5. 21. “Nothing Definite on the Yeti?,” Times of India, 16 January 1960; “Race to Find the Yeti,”; “Soviet Scientists Trail ‘Snowman.’” 22. Staniukovich, Po sledam udivitel’noi zagadki, 13. 23. “Abominable?” 24. “Nothing Definite on the Yeti?” 25. Membership number of the club had risen since the launch of the Sputnik and Explorer. 26. For a brief treatment of American popular science publications, see Katherine Pandora, “Popular Science in National and Transnational Perspective,” Isis 100, no. 2 (June 2009). 27. James T. Andrews, Science for the Masses: The Bolshevik State, Public Science, and the Popular Imagination in Soviet Russia, 1917–1934 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2003), 60. 28. Asif A. Siddiqi, The Red Rocket’s Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857– 1957 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 29. Ibid., 67. 30. For the growing role of science in this period, see, e.g., Paul Josephson, New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok, the Siberian City of Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 31. E. M. Murzaev, “Sovremennyi mif o snezhnom cheloveke. Iz knigi ‘Puteshestvia bez prikliuchenii i fantastiki’,” Priroda, no. 4 (1961). 32. “Kto zhe on? (I),” Tekhnika—molodezhi, no. 4 (1959). 33. Ivan Sanderson, “Po sledam ‘bol’shenogogo’,” Znanie—sila, no. 9 (1968). 34. Zh. I. Kofman, “Otvet professoru Avdreevu. S predisl. red. ‘Zagadka kavkaskikh shaitanov’,” Nauka i religia no. 4 (1965). 35. Not only scientists but also hunters guarded their exclusive knowledge. An article in the hunting magazine Okhota criticized the lack of hunting knowledge of those people who claim to have seen a yeti. N. Vereshchagin, “Mif o shnezhnom cheloveke,” Okhota i okhotnich’e khoziaistvo, no. 5 (1960). 36. Kofman, “Otvet,” 60. 37. See Igor Burtsev, “Hominology in Russia. Personal Observations, Problems and Perspectives,” in Ohio Bigfoot Conference (Ohio: s.n., 2008), 4. 38. Boris Porshnev, O nachale chelovecheskoi istorii (Moscow: Mysl’ 1974; reprint, Moscow: FERI-V, 2006), 534–48. 39. “Soviet Solution to the Snowman,” Times (UK), 15 February 1964. 40. Boris Porshnev, “Vozmozhna li seichas nauchnaia revolutsiia v primatologii?,” Voprosy filosofii 3 (1966). 41. For the use of the term pseudoscience in the Cold War, see Jens Thiel and Peter Th. Walther, “‘Pseudowissenschaft’ im Kalten Krieg. Diskreditierungsstrategien in Ost und West,” in Pseudowissenschaft: Konzeptionen von Nichtwissenschaftlichkeit in der Wissenschaftsgeschichte, ed. Dirk Rupnow (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008), 308–342, and Michael Hagner, “Bye-Bye Science, Welcome Pseudoscience? Reflexionen über einen beschädigten Status,” in ibid., 21–50. 42. Boris Porshnev, “Bor’ba za trogloditov,” Prostor, no. 4 (1968): 98–112.

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43. Dmitri Bayanov, In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman: A Record of Investigation (Moscow: Crypto-Logos, 1996), 8. 44. Bernard Heuvelmans, On the Track of Unknown Animals, trans. Richard Garnett (London: R. Hart-Davis, 1958). 45. For this process of enrolment, see Cooter and Pumfrey, “Separate Spheres and Public Places.” 46. Koffmann, “Reflections on the Possible Survival of a Population of Relict Hominoids,” 21. 47. Igor Burtsev, “Expedition ‘Hissar-80’: Bigfoot Co-Op, June 1981,” in In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman: A Record of Investigation, by Dmitri Bayanov (Moscow: Crypto-Logos, 1996). 48. Dmitri Bayanov, “A Field Investigation into the Relict Hominoid Situation in Tajikistan,” Cryptozoology 3 (1984). 49. Ronald Westrum, “A Note on Monsters,” Journal of Popular Culture 8, no. 4 (1975): 868. Koffmann was firstly joined by a group of amateurs in 1967; see Odette Tchernine, In Pursuit of the Abominable Snowman (New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1971), 21. 50. Bayanov, In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman, 152. 51. Richard Owen, “Yeti Fails to Live up to the Ideals of Communism,” Times (UK), 9 April 1984, 1. 52. Ibid. 53. See, for example, Miriam Elder, “Siberia Home to Yeti, Bigfoot Enthusiasts Insist,” Guardian, 10 October 2011; “Forschertreffen in Sibirien. ‘Russische Yetis sind scheu,’” Spiegel Online, 10 October 2011. 54. “Group of International Scientists on Yeti Hunt in Siberia,” Cryptoreports, 18 October 2011.

Bibliography “Abominable?” Times of India, 1 February 1959. Andrews, James T. Science for the Masses: The Bolshevik State, Public Science, and the Popular Imagination in Soviet Russia, 1917–1934. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2003. “‘Apemen May Still Exist’.” Times of India, 11 July 1958. Bauer, Henry. “Society and Scientific Anomalies: Common Knowledge about the Loch Ness Monster.” Journal of Scientific Exploration 1, no. 1 (January 1987): 51–74. Bayanov, Dmitri. “A Field Investigation into the Relict Hominoid Situation in Tajikistan.” Cryptozoology 3 (1984): 74–79. ———. In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman: A Record of Investigation. Moscow: Crypto-Logos, 1996. Burtsev, Igor. “Expedition ‘Hissar-80’: Bigfoot Co-Op, June 1981.” In In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman: A Record of Investigation, by Dmitri Bayanov, 53–62. Moscow: Crypto-Logos, 1996. ———. “Hominology in Russia: Personal Observations, Problems and Perspectives.” In Ohio Bigfoot Conference. Ohio: s.n., 2008. Buhs, Joshua B. Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

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Cooter, Roger, and Stephen Pumfrey. “Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture.” History of Science 32, no. 2 (1994): 237–67. Daegling, David J. Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America’s Enduring Legend. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004. Daum, Andreas W. “Varieties of Popular Science and the Transformations of Public Knowledge: Some Historical Reflections.” Isis 100, no. 2 (2009): 319–332. Dendle, Peter. “Cryptozoology in the Medieval and Modern Worlds.” Folklore 117, no. 2 (2006): 190–209. Elder, Miriam. “Siberia Home to Yeti, Bigfoot Enthusiasts Insist.” Guardian, 10 October 2011. Retrieved 14 June 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/ oct/10/siberia-home-to-yeti-bigfoot. “Facts and Guesses (Komsomolskaia Pravda, January 18).” Current Digest of the Soviet Press 10, no. 4 (1958). “Group of International Scientists on Yeti Hunt in Siberia.” Cryptoreports, 18 October 2011. Retrieved 5 May 2017 from http://cryptoreports.com/tag/yeti-conference. “Forschertreffen in Sibirien. ‘Russische Yetis sind scheu’.” Spiegel Online, 10 October 2011. Retrieved 14 June 2017 from http://www.spiegel.de/reise/aktuell/forschertreffen-insibirien-russische-yetis-sind-scheu-a-791050.html. Hagner, Michael. “Bye-Bye Science, Welcome Pseudoscience? Reflexionen über einen beschädigten Status.” In Pseudowissenschaft: Konzeptionen von Nichtwissenschaftlichkeit in der Wissenschaftsgeschichte, edited by Dirk Rupnow, 21–50. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008. Halpin, Marjorie M., and Michael M. Ames, eds. Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Records and Modern Evidence. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980. Heuvelmans, Bernard. On the Tracks of Unknown Animals. Translated by Richard Garnett. London: R. Hart-Davis, 1958. Izzard, Ralph. The Abominable Snowman Adventure. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1955. Josephson, Paul. New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok, the Siberian City of Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Kleinenberg, E., and Boris Porshnev. “Studies in the Soviet Union in Connection with the Snow Man.” [In Chinese.] Huanmin Jibao, 11 February 1959. Koffmann, Marie-Jeanne. “Reflections on the Possible Survival of a Population of Relict Hominoids in the Caucasus.” In In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman, by Dmitri Bayanov, 19–35. Moscow: Crypto-Logos, 1996. Kofman, Zh. I. “Otvet professoru Avdreevu. S predisl. red. ‘Zagadka kavkaskikh shaitanov’.” Nauka i religia no. 4 (1965): 56–61. “Kto zhe on? (I).” Tekhnika—molodezhi no. 4 (1959): 34. Loxton, Daniel, and Donald R. Prothero. Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Maurer, Eva. “Cold War, ‘Thaw’ and ‘Everlasting Friendship’: Soviet Mountaineers and Mount Everest, 1953–1960.” International Journal of the History of Sport 26, no. 4 (2009): 484–500. McLeod, Michael. Anatomy of a Beast: Obsession and Myth on the Trail of Bigfoot. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Morris, James. “The Next ‘Everest’ for Man to Conquer.” New York Times, 13 July 1958.

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Murzaev, E. M. “Sovremennyi mif o snezhnom cheloveke. Iz knigi ‘Puteshestvia bez prikliuchenii i fantastiki’.” Priroda, no. 4 (1961): 71–76. “Nothing Definite on the Yeti?” Times of India, 16 January 1960. Obruchev, Sergei V. “Novye materialy o ‘snezhnom cheloveke’ (Ieti).” Izvestiia Vsesoiuznogo geograficheskogo obshchestva 89, no. 4 (1957): 339–43. Orestov, O. “Gimalaiskaia likhoradka.” Pravda, 10 August 1954. Owen, Richard. “Yeti Fails to Live Up to the Ideals of Communism.” Times (UK), 9 April 1984. Pandora, Katherine. “Popular Science in National and Transnational Perspective.” Isis 100, no. 2 (June 2009): 346–58. Porshnev, Boris. “The Mystery of the Snow Man Will Be Uncovered.” [In Chinese.] An interview by the correspondent of the newspaper. Renmin Ribao, 18 April 1959. ———. “Vozmozhna li seichas nauchnaia revolutsiia v primatologii?” Voprosy filosofii 3 (1966): 108-119. ———. “Bor’ba za trogloditov.” Prostor, no. 4 (1968): 98–112. ———. O nachale chelovecheskoi istorii. Moscow: Mysl’, 1974; reprint, Moscow: FERI-V, 2006. “Race to Find the Yeti: Three Nations to Send Expeditions.” Times of India, 1 February 1959. “Red Expert Says Prehistoric Apemen Still Roam Central Mongolia Desert.” Washington Post and Times Herald, 12 July 1958. Rietvo, Harriet. The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. “Russ Believe Abominable Snowmen Real.” Los Angeles Times, 16 November 1958. “Russians Doubt ‘Snowman.’” New York Times, 3 February 1958. Sanderson, Ivan. “Po sledam ‘bol’shenogogo’.” Znanie—sila, no. 9 (1968): 49–63. Schmalzer, Sigrid. The People’s Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in TwentiethCentury China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Siddiqi, Asif A. The Red Rocket’s Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857–1957. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. “Soviet Check Fails to Find ‘Snowman.’” Washington Post and Times Herald, 3 February 1958. “Soviet Scientists Trail ‘Snowman’: Evidence Is Growing That Legend of Man-Beast Is True, Team Reports.” New York Times, Special, 16 November 1958. “Soviet Solution to the Snowman.” Times (UK), 15 February 1964. Staniukovich, Kirill V. “Golub-Iavan. Svedenia o ‘snezhnom chelovekom’ na pamire.” Izvestiia vsesoiuznogo geograficheskogo obshchestva 89, no. 4 (1957): 343–45. ———. Po sledam udivitel’noi zagadki. Iz dnevnika ekspeditsii. Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1965. ———. V gorakh Pamira i Tian’-Shania. Moscow: Mysl’, 1977. Star, Susan Leigh, and James R. Griesemer. “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39.” Social Studies of Science 19, no. 3 (August 1989): 387–420. Stonor, Charles Robert. The Sherpa and the Snowman. London: Hollis & Carter, 1955. Tchernine, Odette. In Pursuit of the Abominable Snowman. New York: Taplinger, 1971. Thiel, Jens, and Peter Th. Walther. “‘Pseudowissenschaft’ im Kalten Krieg. Diskreditierungsstrategien in Ost und West.” In Pseudowissenschaft: Konzeptionen von Nicht-

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wissenschaftlichkeit in der Wissenschaftsgeschichte, edited by Dirk Rupnow, 308–42. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008. Vereshchagin, N. “Mif o shnezhnom cheloveke.” Okhota i okhotnich’e khoziaistvo, no. 5 (1960): 28–29. “Was It a ‘Snowman’? (Izvestiia, January 18).” Current Digest of the Soviet Press 10, no. 4. (1958). Westrum, Ronald. “A Note on Monsters.” Journal of Popular Culture 8, no. 4 (Spring 1975): 862–70.

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CHAPTER 10

Negotiating “Coldness” The Natural Environment and Community Cohesion in Cold War Molotovsk-Severodvinsk Ekaterina Emeliantseva Koller

“A

nd we, who had already received an appointment in the Far North to build submarines, were scornful of him and, looking down on his future job as a draughtsman, suggested he should attach a small cushion to his pants to avoid getting piles.”1 So said a shipbuilding engineer from the Soviet center of nuclear submarine construction, Severodvinsk (Molotovsk, until 1957), when recalling the end of his studies in the late-1950s Nikolaev. Students there had teased a pal who, unlike them, preferred an office job in central Russia, in Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod, since 1990) to an appointment in far-flung Molotovsk. The distinction those young men made between a challenging and prestigious job in a hostile natural environment, serving their country’s defense, and a mediocre “pen-pusher” position in a central region is symptomatic. They obviously felt proud of having been appointed to the submarine construction plant on the White Sea coast, for the rough conditions there corresponded to their idea masculinity, of being “real men,” in contrast to the softy among them who had opted for a “cushy number.” In the mind’s eye of those youngsters, the two cities were worlds apart. And indeed, this mental map mirrored the official zoning, where Molotovsk was classified as an area of the “Far North.” Yet, although the cities belonged at the time to different climatic-economic zones, they are quite close on the factual climatic map. And while Nizhny Novgorod has a more continental climate, its average temperature, wind speed, and humidity are fairly similar to those of Molotovsk. Indeed, the two cities are located in neighboring climatic zones.2 This anecdote illustrates that discourses about the natural environment and climatic conditions are embedded in social interactions and engender symbolic capital. This chapter will address those issues by focusing on perceptions of the natural environment and the significance of the “cold climate” for the development of the city of Molotovsk-Severodvinsk as a major hub in the Soviet military-industrial complex.

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“The North” and “coldness” have served as complex symbols of Russia’s peculiar place within the cultural landscape of Europe since antiquity.3 While Western observers’ debates about the cultural heart of Europe, especially since the eighteenth century, declared the “barbaric” North to be inferior to the more “civilized” Mediterranean South, both Russian and Soviet authorities and the local cultural elites have long since identified the North as the locus of Russia’s essential cultural roots, and its geographical and economic scope with their empire’s grandeur.4 The symbolism of the “North” has, however, always proved flexible and complex enough to accommodate diverse and even conflicting images, associations, and aspirations throughout the history of Russia, respectively of the Soviet Union.5 The Soviet authorities forged a specifically Stalinist “Arctic myth” from the cultural connotations evoked by Russia’s North, one they hoped would mold Soviet citizens into heroes and mobilize the masses for the conquest of space and nature on the road to Communism.6 Not that “manufacturing the Artic myth” (John McCannon) was ever only sanctioned propaganda. Its Promethean appeal also opened up very real new opportunities for individual selfexpression, ranging from alternative ways of myth celebration to ambivalent feelings and criticism.7 Romantic enthusiasm for the exploration of the North remained a part of Soviet propaganda also after Stalin’s death; the appeal of adventure in the struggle against the elements and patriotic ardor for conquering new space were to be a cohesive force in the disintegrated postwar Soviet society.8 In particular the vast territory of Siberia became the focus of romantic aspirations in the complex post-Stalinist Soviet era.9 But this romantic appeal was also bolstered by a slew of concrete material benefits and social prestige. These developments took place under the specific circumstances of the Cold War arms race. Environmental aspects of the Cold War are a burgeoning field of research, addressing such matters as the acceleration of ecological damage, the depletion of natural resources, the production of knowledge about “hostile environments,” and the interrelation of military, state, and scientific agencies.10 This chapter takes a fresh angle on the trope of the hostile natural environment or the cold climate during the Cold War, treating it namely as a resource of the era in negotiations of everyday practice. The entanglement of the Soviet North exploration, the Cold War frenzy, and the development of the welfare state will be examined here in light of the exemplary closed city of Molotovsk-Severodvinsk by applying the anthropological notion of “weather talk” to the analysis of interactions between different actors. The weather discourse, or weather talk, was crucial to the reproduction and dissemination of the “conquest of the North” myth respectively to the mass mobilization drives that sought to equate the severe climatic conditions of the Soviet North with the everyday heroism of Soviet citizens committed to build-

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ing the Communist future.11 The term “weather talk” focuses on people’s experience of weather as a social and cultural phenomenon. It is its relative nature, the intersection of “multiple time frames,” that constitutes the core aspect of any human experience of the weather.12 This is why climate anthropologists pay special attention to the ways in which people describe and appropriate physical phenomena, that is, to their storytelling and mythmaking around the issues of weather and climate.13 At this point, weather talk intersects also with what Sverker Sörlin elaborates on in this volume as cryohistory, which conceptualizes ice and snow as social categories.14 Of pivotal importance for this chapter is the notion that weather experience and weather talk are important sources of social capital. Especially in the case of Molotovsk-Severodvinsk, the climatic component of the northern conquest myth was bolstered by adequate rewards and recognition in the form of material incentives; hence, although its climatic conditions barely differed from those of the surrounding settlements, Molotovsk-Severodvinsk was the only city in the region to be awarded the status of a “Far North zone.” My aim here is to show that the heroic image of the city and its inhabitants—which was propagated initially by the state but subsequently taken up in popular myth and fiction—was intricately bound up with the material benefits ensuing from the cold climate and coldness (as in “remoteness”) and also that this image was an asset that helped forge the ideological and practical cohesion of a relatively closed community, at least in the Brezhnev era once a certain level of prosperity had been attained. In the following I first touch upon the issues of exploration of the Soviet North and the different categories of North before outlining the development of Molotovsk-Severodvinsk, and then I demonstrate the role of weather talk for the community of Molotovsk-Severodvinsk.

The Soviet Hierarchies of the “North” The history of the Soviet zoning of the North begins in the 1920s with the introduction of several legal and economic categories. The importance of natural resources and their exploitation stood at the core of the early definitions, when “the North” became an economic term for that “underdeveloped” area to the north of the territories included in the first economic planning programs.15 The definition was deliberately vague—there were neither clearly marked borders nor elaborated criteria—since the Soviet prospect was that economic expansion would steadily progress in the region and thereby shrink “the North” by continually pushing its southern border northward.16 During the 1920s, the Soviet zoning of the North struck a balance between economic needs and its “civilizing” mission. While incentives to at-

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tract a workforce were allowed for in the category of the “remote areas of the RSFSR,”17 state support for the “small people of the North” was foreseen in the category of the “northern peripheral areas populated by indigenous ethnicities”—the “Far North.”18 As certain territories came to be included in industrialisation schemes, the economic aspect of the zoning of the North gained in importance, and the focus shifted from the needs of the local population to the recruitment of a non-indigenous workforce. This shift was manifest in the 1932 introduction of incentives to attract people to work specifically in the North, the so-called northern bonuses.19 In similarity to the privileges hitherto awarded for work in remote areas, the newly recruited specialists received a higher salary, a reduction in accommodation costs, and the right to retain their lodgings in the places they were recruited from. Yet these innovations simultaneously discriminated against employees drawn from the local population, who were not entitled to bonuses. Only those originally resident at a distance of over four hundred kilometers and recruited by special bureaus could claim additional northern payments. The system became more complex following reintroduction of the bonuses after World War II: the economy still took priority over actual climatic conditions but was challenged now by a more differentiated approach to climate.20 A new additional category of “areas equated to the Far North” served to attract people to remote areas that did not comply with the climatic definitions of the “Far North.”21 However, this policy did not have the desired effect: recruited employees did not remain long in those areas, and the local workforce was unable to benefit legally from those bonuses. Furthermore, confusing and sometimes excessive salary schemes and unjustified inclusion of some areas in eligible categories increased costs enormously.22 The revision of the Far North bonuses in 1960 aimed to address those issues by broadening the local population’s access to bonuses and downsizing the most expensive zones.23 The rate of the bonuses was calculated according to the local climate’s level of harshness and the resulting difficulties in industrial development and in attracting and retaining professionals. Air temperature and wind speed were the main criteria by which the harshness of a climate zone and the relevant bonus were measured.24 The zoning of the entire northern area became more differentiated, and specific zoning schemes were introduced: climatic zoning, zoning specific to appropriate machinery and engineering and to conditions for building and construction, infrastructural zoning, agricultural zoning, zoning specific to fishing and hunting conditions, and so on.25 However, classification of the northern areas with a stronger focus on living conditions for the population was put forward for consideration only in the late 1960s.26 It was also in this decade that the necessity of focusing more clearly on local climatic conditions in order to foster effective industrial development was recognized at last. Decisions taken by the Communist Party of the Soviet

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Union—from its Twenty-Third Congress in March–April 1966 through to its Twenty-Sixth in February 1981—reflected the need to use specific machinery resistant to low temperatures as well as to increase the bonuses for people working either in the Far North zones or the “equated territories” and to provide them with more housing and cultural infrastructure.27 Within the Far North category, differences in working and living conditions were reflected by the wage increase index: the highest index of “2” was applied to the islands of the Arctic Ocean, the Chukotka region, and partially to the Yakut (since 1991, Sakha) Republic. This was intended to compensate for the difficulties of living and working under cold and remote conditions: the additional cost of a high-energy diet and warm winter clothing as well as the higher cost of consumer goods there in general. The status of Molotovsk-Severodvinsk within the zoned structure of the Soviet North was both unique and characteristic. It demonstrates the peculiarity of these hierarchies that neatly intertwined factual climatic conditions with the state’s propagandistic and economic needs.

The Politics of Coldness in a Cold War Utopia: Construction of an Exceptional Climate and Space in Molotovsk-Severodvinsk A product of Stalin’s industrialization, the city known first as Molotovsk and since 1957 as Severodvinsk originated as a settlement called Sudostroi. Founded in 1936 as a construction site for a shipbuilding enterprise on the White Sea coast, located in the delta of the Severnaia Dvina River thirty-five kilometers northwest of Arkhangelsk, the city was built by the prisoners of Yagrinlag. With the establishment of the camp in 1938, the settlement received the status of a city and the name of Molotovsk.28 After the war, the legacy of the camps of Molotovsk disappeared gradually from the cityscape and the memory of its citizens.29 The city’s new name—Severodvinsk—and its image became associated with a project of vibrant industrial modernity and the prosperous patriotism of a Cold War bastion. The development of postwar Molotovsk-Severodvinsk is inseparable from the Cold War strategies of the Soviet government and the military elites. It was the arms race that secured the exceptional prosperity of the city; in 1952 the Soviet Council of Ministers initiated the construction of nuclear submarines and one year later chose Molotovsk as its construction site.30 During the 1970s and 1980s, the “Northern Machine-Building Enterprise” (Sevmash)31 would become one of the central sites of the Soviet military-industrial complex,32 thus ensuring its residents a higher standard of living than enjoyed by surrounding areas. During the 1970s, the city of Severodvinsk had reached that level of prosperity that today evokes nostalgic feelings by the elderly generation. This was

258 Ekaterina Emeliantseva Koller

Map 10.1. Arkhangelsk region (not shown on the map are the Arctic archipelagos of Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya).

Map: © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY-SA 2.0.

made possible by the allocation and channeling of immense resources. With the resolution of the Council of Ministers on 27 July 1972, the city received the status of a border area and was also closed to Soviet citizens without special entry permission.33 While in other areas of the Soviet Union a gradual slowdown of economic development became visible, this was not the case in Severodvinsk. On the contrary, the city boomed during this period. The development of Severodvinsk epitomized the technocratic and social utopia of Late Socialism as the last stage of Soviet industrial modernity. The city boomed due to the expansion of the backbone enterprise Sevmash: the population rose from 100,623 inhabitants in 1962 to 197,232 in 1979.34 Well into the 1980s, Severodvinsk counted between 2,500 and 3,500 newcomers yearly.35 The influx was mainly composed of freshly recruited laborers: new engineering specialists and military personnel.36 They responded particularly well to Soviet propaganda of the cult of technology and romantic self-

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sacrificing work.37 Romanticism and the heroism of everyday life, exposure to advanced technology, and conquest of new horizons were key aspects of the Soviet patriotic myth, securing workers for the military-industrial complex, particularly in the closed cities, a place of honor in Soviet society.38 But apart from enthusiastic appeals to the romantic feelings of young people, there were also material incentives for Soviet citizens from all over the country that significantly enabled the recruitment of workers in Severodvinsk. The high turnover of the workforce and the difficulty of convincing people to stay in the city remained an issue well into the late 1960s. Thereby, the Far North bonuses played a significant part not only in stabilizing the population influx into the city, but also in constructing Severodvinsk as an exceptional place. The first workers—apart from Komsomol activists and prisoners—came from the neighboring northern regions. They were peasants who fled the collectivization disaster.39 The need of qualified specialists was acute, and the problem was to be solved through material incentives. The first engineers recruited for the construction of shipbuilding plant No. 402 received the so-called bonuses for work in “remote areas.”40 With the Soviet government resolution from 12 August 1930, they could retain their flats or rooms in their places of origin, received higher salaries, and could claim discount for housing in Molotovsk.41 The majority of the first recruited specialists came to Molotovsk from Leningrad, Nikolaev, or Sevastopol. And it was mainly they who profited from the bonuses for work in “remote areas.” During the war, from 1 October 1942 on, all additional payments were canceled. With the resolution of the Supreme Council from 1 December 1945, the payments were reintroduced in Molotovsk as the Far North bonuses. The document stated that to “the workers, clerks, and engineers” of Molotovsk shipbuilding plant No. 402 and of construction trust No. 203 were to be granted all privileges and bonuses for those working in the “Far North areas.” The only difference was that in Molotovsk the 10 percent additional payment was granted after one year of work instead of six months.42 But again, those regulations applied to specific categories of residents only: the qualified workforce recruited from outside.43 The material benefits structured the post-war society in Molotovsk-Severodvinsk into the privileged zavodskie (plant workers) and the underprivileged gorodskie (city workers) who were excluded from some significant privileges of the shipbuilding company Sevmash, including significantly higher salaries and much better prospects for getting an apartment.44 The Far North bonuses significantly contributed to this differentiation. Well into the 1960s, the wage increase index was higher at Sevmash than for the rest of the employees of Severodvinsk. This segregation had its imprint on the cityscape as well, with the dividing park between the plant and the city, referred to by the locals as “the park of the wage index.”45 This structure reproduced the economically driven Soviet “climatic” zoning within one single city.

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Constructing space by declaring climatic conditions as exceptional required the inclusion of all residents in the process. Up to the 1960s, however, the climatic arguments for granting Far North bonuses were especially difficult to legitimize vis-à-vis the workers from the surrounding area, the so-called local recruitment, people not eligible for the Far North bonus. Several times the administration of the shipbuilding plant petitioned the governmental agencies in Moscow to grant those bonuses to all employed at the plant. First, they were granted to qualified local workers from the fifth grade and higher. It was only in 1960 that all people working at Sevmash and in the city became eligible for Far North bonuses, when the whole city received the status of an “area equated to Far North,” and in 1967 the status of an “area of the Far North” was awarded.46 This meant an additional payment of 10 percent of the salary after the first year working in the city, with an increase of 10 percent each year, an additional eighteen-day holiday, and better retirement benefits (a year of work would count as 1½ years). The case of Molotovsk-Severodvinsk makes it rather obvious that such classifications were driven by military and economic considerations and not primarily by climatic arguments. Within the Arkhangelsk region, the Nenets National District and the city of Severodvinsk in 1967 were classified as areas of the Far North, while the Leshukonskii, Mezenskii, and Pinezhskii Districts got the status of “areas equated to the Far North.”47 The Nenets National District is the most northern territory of the Arkhangelsk region, located to the northeast of Severodvinsk, mainly above the Arctic Circle.48 The Mezenskii District is the second northern area, located southward from the Nenets district; then comes the Leshukonskii District in the east and the Pinezhskii in the southeast. Among these districts, Severodvinsk is clearly the area with the mildest climatic conditions, similar to Arkhangelsk, which at that time did not appear in these categories at all. The climatic difference between Severodvinsk, with its average January temperature of −11.8°C, and the Nenets District, with −18.4°C in the city of Amderma, was especially significant, but also other districts categorized with Severodvinsk were considerably colder: the city of Mezen’, −14.0°C; the village of Leshukonskoe, −14.7°C; and the settlement of Pinega, −13.9°C.49 Discussions within the Central Party Committee during the revision of the northern bonuses system in the late 1950s and the subsequently accepted zoning testify that Severodvinsk received its status as an exceptional place not on climatic grounds. The city was not included in the first draft of Postanovlenie or into the category of the “Far North” or the “northern and remote areas” or the list of the “areas equated to the Far North.” In another draft the category of the Far North was planned to be reduced to “remote areas” and to “grant [the bonuses for ‘remote areas,’ E.E.K.] as an exception, until further wage regulation.”50 It is indicative that the request of the Archangelsk Regional Party Com-

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mittee to grant to the whole Archangelsk area northern bonuses was rejected on both economic and climatic grounds.51 It was probably the military lobby that finally succeeded in saving the bonuses for Severodvinsk. But the process of granting the city of Severodvinsk the status of a Far North area demonstrates that this was not justified by climatic conditions; rather, it linked the privileged status to the climate and opened up a space for negotiations. In this configuration the cold climate discourse could allow for a share of the symbolic capital resulting from the unique status of the city in this area. It shaped the fabric of the Severodvinsk community and the symbolic space of the city.

The Coldness Asset and Community Cohesion in Molotovsk-Severodvinsk—Coldness Talk in Molotovsk-Severodvinsk: Discourse and Situations After the bonuses for work in remote areas were re-branded in 1945 into the Far North bonuses, the climatic aspect became an element of negotiations between different actors about community cohesion, segregation, different status, and hierarchies. I call this process “negotiation of coldness,” wherein the Stalinist rhetoric of heroic conquest of the nature and the Cold War defense discourses were entangled with the strategic goals of the Soviet government and varying interests of the Soviet people living and working in Molotovsk-Severodvinsk. Within this process, the boundaries of the community were questioned and redefined when different actors were bargaining for coldness, especially during the formative period of the Molotovsk postwar community. After the Far North status of the city was established, the discursive framework of venerating coldness became an element of community cohesion and self-identification of its residents.

Situation I: Bargaining for Coldness and the Boundaries of the Community In the immediate postwar years, it was especially an issue for the so-called local workforce—that is, people from within a four-hundred-kilometer radius of the shipbuilding plant—to negotiate access to the benefits of a “cold climate” from which they were cut off by the Far North bonus regulations. A young technician from the Vologda region (who had studied shipbuilding at the Molotovsk technical school before the war) was appointed in 1947 as foreman at plant No. 402, whereupon he received the prestigious contract for a year with all accompanying Far North privileges.52 When the time came for renewal, the head of the personnel department declined the continuation of the contract, offering instead employment on other, less attractive conditions as a

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“local” worker, without the bonuses. The head of personnel put forth the argument that the young technician originated from a village located less than four hundred kilometers from the plant and as a “local” worker was not eligible for additional payments. He measured the distance with a big wooden draftsman’s scale on a map and mentioned that it was just an issue of one kilometer. The young man was skeptical about how he was able to measure exactly up to one kilometer with an imprecise scale on a physical map. But the head of personnel was confident this was possible. The technician then went to the deputy head of personnel; the latter also refused to renew the contract, with the argument that his parents had been tried for political reasons, had been dekulakized—which means they had lost their property and rights during Stalin’s dekulakization campaign when peasants were forced to join collective farms during the late 1920s and early 1930s. It first aimed at well-to-do peasants but later even at modest peasants with little property. Indeed, the parents of this young man had left their village because they declined to join the collective farm, but he insisted that they were not kulaks. Thereupon the technician sought help from the Molotovsk City Party Committee. He went straight to the first secretary with this plea and found support. The first secretary rebuked the head of the personnel department on the phone, and the latter apologized for measuring the distance incorrectly. So, in the end, the young man got his contract with all the bonuses renewed. Why the first secretary took an interest in him is unknown, but he helped the young man also in another case with the new housing.53 When the young technician came back from war in 1947, his family had to move into one sixteen-square-meter room that with five adults became overcrowded. The neighbors suggested he approach the Party Committee for help. So he went to the first secretary, who greeted him warmly as a returned soldier: For me, the rank and file party member, the first secretary of the City Party Committee was like a general for a soldier. This is the way I entered his office with the military step and reported. Ivan Afanasievich smiled, stretched the hand, and invited me to sit at the table. He began to ask me in detail at which front I fought, in which units, what I got my decorations for, and asked further a lot about everyday issues.54

The technician then explained his housing situation, and the first secretary arranged in person for the young technician and his family to get decent housing with enough space. In this negotiation process over access to the Far North bonuses between a young technician, the party authority, and the decision-makers at the plant, status claims, ascriptions, and identifications were articulated. For the young technician who originated from basically the same climatic region and had

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spent his childhood and adolescence in Molotovsk, it was an issue of transgressing and redefining the boundary between the unprivileged “locals” and privileged recruits from “outside.”55 The authorities at the plant reclassified the young technician from a privileged recruit to a “local” and finally resorted to the last but effective argument of challenging his political loyalty. He then appealed to a higher authority, the party—the same method he used successfully to solve other problems. His status as a decorated soldier56 served the young man as symbolic capital and a social framework to assert his loyalty and prove it in front of the highest political authority in the city, especially when the first secretary was willing to show his supremacy over the other agencies and regulations. The party authorities were frequently decision-makers in the issues of granting the Far North bonuses and reproduced the linkage between the bonuses and political loyalty. The lower ranks of the party cadres already could receive the 10 percent bonus with the confirmation of the Regional Party Committee since the 1930s, as, for example, the secretary of the party cell of work floor No. 8 of the Molotovsk shipbuilding plant, a certain Ivan Fedorovich Borodin.57 The propaganda activist of the party cell of Molotovsk construction trust No. 203, a certain Vladimir Aleksandrovich Khrebtov, was recruited in 1951 from military unit No. 38632 and switched to party work the following year.58 The Regional Party Committee could in a questionable situation also stop payments for nonparty members, as was the case with a schoolteacher who was away from the area for education and had returned,59 or grant payments for the workers in the party administration up to cleaning personnel or drivers.60 In some cases, even the local party officials were unsure about the eligibility of particular workers, due to complex legislation and a lot of additional regulations and exceptions, and appealed to the Central Regional Party Committee in Arkhangelsk to clarify the situation.61 For some cases, even the central government authorities (e.g., the Ministry of Finance) were consulted.62 The payment of the northern bonuses was an issue linked to political loyalty even in the neighboring regions of the Far North behind the Arctic Circle, such as the settlement of Amderma in the Nenets Autonomous District. In the case of a certain N. I. Femicheva, a special resolution of the regional party authorities was needed. Femicheva had several times changed her job in Amderma between 1948 and 1955 and on the basis of her new job had lost her benefits. As a typist for a local newspaper, she did profit from the Far North bonuses, but not when she switched to the local airport as an office worker. However, she received these bonuses again and retained them after starting to work for the local Party Committee of Admerma.63 In Molotovsk-Severodvinsk, bargaining for the privileges of coldness was an individual process until access was granted to all residents in 1960. After the Severodvinsk workers outside the shipbuilding plant were also included into

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the Far North regulations, this process could acquire the quality of collective action. When Nikita Khrushchev visited Severodvinsk in July 1962, it was an exceptionally hot day and rumors spread that he would consider the Far North bonuses in this area inappropriate and cut them.64 The weather talk became in this situation an element of community construction and negotiation about the privileged status of its members. In fact, Khrushchev did not make any changes, although some were planned, but this was not known to the population. These rumors may be attributed to his cuts in other regions and also to previous cuts in the Soviet navy and his general reforms. The direct linkage of these bonuses to the factual weather conditions opened up discussion of the ambiguity of climatic arguments. This became obvious especially vis-àvis the residents of Arkhangelsk, located thirty-five kilometers southeast of Severodvinsk. In his address at the Lenin timber plant in Arkhangelsk during his visit to the Kola Peninsula and the northern area in July 1962, Khrushchev emphasized the economic and military importance of the area.65 He also stressed once again the North and the cold climate as an element of the cultural identification of Russia.66 But the issue remained why some segments of the population in the Arkhangelsk area received additional payments for their work in this climate and others, like the residents of the city of Arkhangelsk, did not. This situation created an exceptional status of Severodvinsk, where the climate became a political and economic factor. This secured the prosperity of the Severodvinsk community at the expense of the surrounding area, when people were happy to accept offers to work in Severodvinsk—for example, the judge of the regional court of Arkhangelsk, who in 1960 became director of the Severodvinsk vocational school, or a stage director from Leningrad, who came to work in the 1970s at the local drama theater.67

Situation II: Venerating Coldness and the Sense of Self in Cold War Severodvinsk The general consumerist turn in Soviet domestic politics since the late 1950s and early 1960s impacted the development of the northern areas, too.68 The interests and concerns of people living in these areas became the focus of politics in a stronger way than in the previous decades.69 The first medical studies about health conditions and acclimatization of people arriving in the North were conducted.70 Khrushchev personally nurtured expectations when during his visit to the Arkhangelsk region in 1962 he proclaimed, “What is Communism, dear friends? Communism is affluence that people have everything they need.”71 The living and working conditions started to improve: higher bonuses were paid, more houses were built, the road to Arkhangelsk was completed, and finally adequate housing was provided. The new housing line was branded

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“Severodvinskaia seriia” and featured construction designed for living in northern areas, such as triple glazed windows and warm storage.72 These politics acknowledged the personal needs of people living in northern areas, but in Severodvinsk they simultaneously nurtured the connection of the city’s exceptional status and the cold climate. The “unattractive” climate, in the lingo of the recruiters at the shipbuilding plant,73 became an important element of the residents’ self-identification. As part of a retrospective emotional recollection, narratives about the weather—emotions and cultural meaning attached to weather conditions—have contributed to the narratives about the city, its history, and its sense of self.74 The dominating “harsh climate” narrative was reproduced in the first place by the recruited workforce from the southern areas of Russia, when they came to the “distant and cold” city in the “Far North” from Nikolaev on the Black Sea, as, for instance, a group of young shipbuilding engineers in 1956.75 An engineer from Sevastopol recalls about his arrival in Molotovsk in November 1946 that he was wearing a light coat and hat but received upon his arrival at the plant a fur coat, felt boots, and a trapper hat.76 Similar feelings and perception modes recur in the reminiscences of an arrival from Kiev in 1964.77 Arrival in the city constituted in the recollections a kind of rite of passage and is often narrated through weather emotions, and the uncertainty of the new arrivals is translated into the cityscape and weather: “The city built in wood greeted us with a gloomy morning in October, it was snowing.”78 The perception of the climate in Molotovsk-Severodvinsk by the new arrivals was not uniform, though, and highly depended on their place of origin. For those coming to Severodvinsk from Siberia, the city could even appear as “warm and sunny,” as a young engineer recalled upon his arrival in 1963 from the Siberian city of Tomsk, with a similar or even harsher climate.79 For the crews of submarines coming to the city from service at the Barents Sea, where snow lies on the bald peaks even in June, Severodvinsk appeared as a green city.80 A submarine officer, who had served in Molotovsk-Severodvinsk in the late 1950s and early 1960s, began his recollection with reference to the city’s location on the summer coast of the White Sea.81 In fact, the coast features an exceptionally mild microclimate for the area and is also a location of the city’s beach, which is very popular with the residents of Severodvinsk. The harsh climate narrative became a part of the city’s foundation myth, a story about the conquest of nature and the enthusiastic effort of the first builders of the city, taking their place in history alongside such giants of Stalin’s industrialization as Komsomol’sk-na-Amure.82 The discursive framework of hostile nature became also a part of memory work and influenced the narrative of Yagrinlag; but this other story about the early days of Molotovsk could only be told during the Gorbachev era.83

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The harsh climate narrative in Molotovsk-Severodvinsk was a continuation of the Stalinist “Arctic myth,” projecting the harsh nature of the North into the tough masculinity of its conquerors, which eliminates weak bodies and weak minds in a Darwinian way.84 Praising the struggle against the elements and the bravery of the people became a central motif in local poetry, as, for example, with a poem of a local journalist and poet Iurii Anan’in: In our northern land the nature Itself chooses its inhabitants They are proved in their bravery They didn’t bow in front of their destiny! My fellow-countrymen don’t believe in destiny They eagerly take it. And if a northerner has stepped out at the coast— No wave can repulse him back!85

This discursive framework was complementary and compensatory to the patriotic rhetoric of the arms race, appealing to the young submarine constructors, especially given the fact that they couldn’t celebrate their heroism at work in public due to severe censorship; any direct reference to navy and submarine construction in the city was strictly forbidden even in the house press at Sevmash, not to mention other publications.86 The harsh climate narrative became a story about masculinity and country defense, but this story could be celebrated in public only after 1991 when the status of the closed city was abolished. The local poets and songwriters were then free to praise the main purpose of life for the majority of city’s residents—the completion of a new submarine: Shipbuilders, this is our high day! God bless it for a long journey. The launching of the latest work order: We send to Neptune to aid him another submarine. . . . It looks like we are not agitated and smile at a wave, no, to be a submariner—this is cool! And to be it in the North—this doubles it. Because behind us is the might and power, in a difficult hour it is our backbone, an asset of Russia— the shipbuilders of Sevmash.87

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It is characteristic that the work of the submarine constructors here is synonymous with service on submarines. The North symbolizes the central element that connects the dangers of deep waters and the harsh climate onshore as a hostile environment for the brave country defenders. The local patriotic feelings based on the harsh climate narrative, reinforced by the Cold War rhetoric, have survived the end of the Soviet Union and remain a backbone of community cohesion in Severodvinsk.

Conclusion: Climatic Exclusiveness and Political Commitment “The North” and “cold climate” as cultural categories are multilayered complexes of associations and symbols; they are also products of everyday practice. With the case of avalanche discourse in Soviet Kazakhstan, Marc Elie’s contribution to this volume shows that experts and political elites could use the natural environment as resource for a scientific and political agenda.88 In the case of Molotovsk-Severodvinsk, the “cold climate” became one of the central elements of self-identification. The construction of an exceptional place via “exceptional natural environment” culminated in granting the city the status of a Far North area. The “cold climate” discourse provided space for negotiation between different actors and shaped the fabric of the Severodvinsk community and the symbolic space of the city. Up to the 1960s, the city was divided into a privileged and a non-privileged zone. The exceptional climatic space was confined to weapon-production sites only. In a process of negotiating coldness, the citizens of Molotovsk-Severodvinsk constantly challenged and redefined community boundaries and the boundaries of exceptional space. Bargaining for coldness became a strategy of non-privileged citizens to acquire their share in a prospering Cold War utopia. With the widening access to Far North bonuses, the whole city was included into a privileged zone embarking on a strategy of venerating coldness. The harsh climate narrative became a part of the foundation myth of the city and a complementary and compensatory element of patriotic arms race rhetoric. In the process of negotiating coldness, the Stalinist rhetoric of the northern conquest could fit into the Cold War defense discourse via climatic exceptionalism and reach a new level of ideological commitment, buttressed by the Soviet government’s consumerist politics. This case of local Soviet patriotism backed up by exclusiveness, prosperity, and prestige opens up the question of the Soviet system’s gradual mutability89 with ideological goals and patriotic appeals meeting people’s aspirations. Contrary to the notion of the system’s total decline and people’s alienation, the story about negotiating coldness in Molotovsk-Severodvinsk uncovers potentials for gradual change.

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Ekaterina Emeliantseva Koller is SNCF-Professor in East European History at the University of Zurich. She has widely published on late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century religious communities, late Imperial Russia, sports history, and late Soviet culture. She is the coauthor of Einführung in die Osteuropäische Geschichte (UTB, 2008) and Vertraut und fremd zugleich. Jüdischchristliche Nachbarschaften in Warschau—Lengnau—Lemberg (Böhlau, 2009); the guest editor of The Sacred Before the Camera (special issue of Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 2/2009); and the author of “The Privilege of Seclusion: Consumption Strategies in the Closed City of Severodvinsk” (Ab Imperio 2/2011) and Religiöse Grenzgänger im östlichen Europa. Glaubensenthusiasten um die Prophetin Ekaterina Tatarinova und den Pseudomessias Jakob Frank im Vergleich (1750–1850) (Böhlau, 2018). She is currently working on her book on Cold War Soviet society in the closed city of Severodvinsk and is beginning to work on the late Soviet village.

Notes 1. E. B. Peskov, “Nepridumannye rasskaziki,” in EMP—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1 (Archangelsk: Pravda Severa, 2004), 344. 2. Spravochnik po klimatu SSSR, vypusk 1, Arkhangelskaia i Vologotskaia oblasti, Karel’skaia i Komi ASSR, chast’ II: temperatura vozdukha i pochvy (Leningrad: Gidrometeoizdat, 1965), 62–63. 3. Hans Lemberg, “Zur Entstehung des Osteuropabegriffs im 19. Jahrhundert. Vom ‘Norden’ zum ‘Osten’ Europas,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 33 (1985); Stefan Troebst, “Nordosteuropa: Begriff – Traditionen – Strukturen,” Kommune. Forum für Politik, Ökonomie, Kultur 15, no. 5 (May 1997); cf. Larry Wolf, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); Frithjof B. Schenk, “Mental Maps. Die Konstruktion von geographischen Räumen in Europa seit der Aufklärung,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 28, no. 3 (2002). On space in Russian studies in general, see Karl Schlögel, ed., Mastering Russian Spaces. Raum und Raumbewältigung als Probleme der russischen Geschichte (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011); Malte Rolf, “Importing ‘the Spatial Turn’ to Russia: Recent Studies on the Spatialization of Russian History,” Kritika 11, no. 2 (2010). On the history of the Russian North, see Ralph Tuchtenhagen, “Nordrussland,” in Studienhandbuch Östliches Europa, Bd. 2: Geschichte des Russischen Reiches und der Sowjetunion, ed. Thomas Bohn and Dietmar Neutatz (Cologne: Böhlau, 2009). On geographical and climatic determinism and cultural debates about climate in Russia, see Konstantin A. Bogdanov, “Pogoda russkoi istorii. Ocherk klimaticheskoi istoriosofii,” in Peremennye velichiny. Pogoda russkoi istorii i drugie siuzhety, ed. Konstantin A. Bogdanov (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2014). 4. D. S. Likhachev, “Rossiia nikogda ne byla Vostokom,” in Razdum’ia o Rossii, ed. D. S. Likhachev (St. Petersburg: Logos, 1999); D. S. Likhachev, “Russkii Sever,” in Razdum’ia o Rossii, ed. D. S. Likhachev (St. Petersburg: Logos, 1999).

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5. Ulrich Schmid, “Eurasien oder Skandoslavien? Der ‘Norden’ im kulturellen Selbstverständnis Russlands,” Osteuropa 61, no. 2–3 (2011); Anna Stammler-Gossman, “Reshaping the North of Russia: Towards a Conception of Space; Position Paper for the 5th NRF Open Assembly, September 24–28 2008,” Northern Research Forum; Martina Winkler, “Imagining the Arctic, the Russian Way: Concepts and Projects for the Arctic Ocean in the Eighteenth Century,” New Global Studies 7, no. 2 (2013). 6. John McCannon, Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); John McCannon, “Tabula Rasa in the North: The Soviet Arctic and Mythic Landscapes in Stalinist Popular Culture,” in The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space, ed. Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003). 7. McCannon, Red Arctic, 134–44; McCannon, “Tabula Rasa.” 8. On the Soviet postwar society and the issue of disintegration in general, see Stephen Lovell, The Shadow of War: The Soviet Union and Russia, 1941 to the Present (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 109–16; cf. Petr Vail’ and Aleksandr Genis, 60-e. Mir sovetskogo cheloveka (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 1996), 80–84, 126–38. Specifically on high labor turnover and work conditions, see Donald Filzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 9. Johannes Grützmacher, Die Baikal-Amur-Magistrale: Vom stalinistischen Lager zum Mobilisierungsprojekt unter Brežnev (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012); Christopher J. Ward, Brezhnev’s Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009); Mikhail Rozhanskii, “‘Ottepel’ na sibirskom moroze. Ustnaia istoriia udarnykh stroek,” Otechestvennye zapiski 5, no. 50 (2012). 10. John R. McNeill and Corinna R. Unger, eds., Environmental Histories of the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Klaus Gestwa, “Polarisierung der Sowjetgeschichte. Die Antarktis im Kalten Krieg,” Osteuropa 61, no. 2–3 (2011); Boris Belge and Klaus Gestwa, “Wetterkrieg und Klimawandel. Meteorologie im Kalten Krieg.” Osteuropa 59, no. 10 (2009). For a broader context of the second modernity, see Kate Brown, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Kate Brown, Dispatches from Dystopia: Histories of Places Not Yet Forgotten (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). 11. On the origins and the intellectual history of weather discourse in the European tradition, see Bogdanov: “Pogoda russkoi istorii.” On the perception of the natural environment of the North, see Alla Bolotova, “Conquering Nature and Engaging with the Environment in the Russian Industrialised North” (PhD thesis, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, 2014); cf. Alla Bolotova and Florian Stammler, “How the North Became Home: Attachment to Place among Industrial Migrants in Murmansk Region,” in Migration in the Circumpolar North: Issues and Contexts, ed. Lee Huskey and Chris Southcott (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2010). 12. Sarah Strauss and Ben Orlove, “Up in the Air: The Anthropology of Weather and Climate,” in Weather, Climate, Culture, ed. Sarah Strauss and Ben Orlove (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 3.

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13. Nicole Peterson and Kenneth Broad, “Climate and Weather Discourse in Anthropology: From Determinism to Uncertain Futures,” in Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions, ed. Susan A. Crate and Mark Nuttall (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2009), 71. New historical research on climate and weather focuses mainly on the relations between the social and cultural perception of climate. Cf. Franz Mauelshagen and Christian Pfister, “Vom Klima zur Gesellschaft: Klimageschichte im 21. Jahrhundert,” in KlimaKulturen. Soziale Wirklichkeiten im Klimawandel, ed. Harald Welzer, Hans-Georg Soeffner, and Dana Giesecke (New York: Campus, 2010), 264. 14. See Sverker Sörlin’s contribution to this volume. 15. I. P. Kapitonov and S. V. Slavin, Problemy razmeshcheniia proizvoditel’nykh sil na severe vo vrotom piatiletii (Moscow, Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe ekonomicheskoe izdatel’stvo, 1932). 16. Ibid., 3. This optimistic expectation was replaced in later planning by the remark that the local research institutions should specify and adjust the southern border of the “northern area” according to the economic criteria of the “North.” Nauchnye osnovy razvitiia i razmeshcheniia proizvoditel’nykh sil zony Severa na 1971–1980gg., Programma issledovanii i osnovnye nauchno-metodicheskie polozheniia po teme (Moscow: GOSPLAN SSSR. Sovet po izucheniiu proizvoditel’nykh sil, 1967), 19. Subsequent publications became even more cautious about such promises and saw some of the economic criteria of the “northern area,” such as a low density of population, remain even after considerable development of the area and continue to be the dominant features of this territory. S. V. Slavin, Osvoenie Severa Sovetskogo Soiuza (Moscow: Nauka, 1982), 11; S. V. Slavin, Promyshlennoe i transportnoe osvoenie Severa SSSR (Moscow: Ekonomgiz, 1961), 24–26. 17. Alla Dmitrievna Rabinovich, “Osobennosti pravovogo regulirovaniia truda rabotnikov Krainego Severa” (diss., Akademiia truda i social’nykh otnoshenii, Moscow, 2007), 53; cf. Postanovlenie VTsIK i SNK. “O l’gotakh dlia komandiruemykh na raboty v otdalennye mestnosti RSFSR,” Sobranie uzakononenii RSFSR, 25 July 1923. 18. E. N. Fedorova, “Istoriia raionirovaniia Rossiiskogo Severa,” in Raionirovanie (zonirovanie) Severa Rossiiskoi Federatsii, ed. V. V. Filipov (Iakutsk: Izdatel’stvo instituta merzlotovedeniia SO RAN, 2007), 5; Maria K. Gavrilova, Evdokiia N. Fedorova, and Olga A. Lazebnik, “O raionirovanii Severa Rossii po diskomfortnosti prozhivaniia,” Nauka i obrazovanie 2 (2003): 16. On the “small people of the North,” cf. Yuri Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994). 19. Postanovlenie VTsiK i SNK RSRS, “O vvedenii v deistvie s 1 ianvaria 1923g. Polozheniia o l’gotakh dlia lic, rabotaiushchikh v raionakh Krainego Severa RSFSR,” Sobranie uzakononenii RSFSR, 10 May 1932. 20. Nauchnye osnovy razvitiia i razmeshcheniia proizvoditel’nykh sil zony Severa na 1971– 1980gg., Programma issledovanii i osnovnye nauchno-metodicheskie polozheniia po teme, 5; Slavin, Osvoenie Severa Sovetskogo Soiuza, 40; Slavin, Promyshlennoe i transportnoe osvoenie Severa SSSR, 8. 21. Slavin, Osvoenie Severa Sovetskogo Soiuza, 14. 22. “Proekty postanovlenii Sovmina SSSR ob uporiadochenii zarabotnoi platy i perevode na sokrashchennyi rabochii den’ rabochikh i sluzhashchikh v severnykh raionakh SSSR, raschety i obosnovaniia k nim, 1957–1958” (RGANI, f.5, op.30, d. 217).

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23. “Proekt postanovleniia Sovmina SSSR i proekt Ukaza Prezidiuma Verkh, Soveta SSSR ob uporiadochenii l’got dlia lic, rabotaiushchikh v raionakh Krainego Severa, v sev. i otdalennykh raionakh, instrukciia po primineniiu dannogo Ukaza Prezidiuma Verkh. Soveta, t. 2, 1957–1958” (RGANI, f.5, op.30, d. 218); cf. S. V. Slavin, Promyshlennoe i transportnoe osvoenie Severa SSSR, 24; Slavin, Osvoenie Severa Sovetskogo Soiuza, 14–15. 24. Ibid., 15. 25. Nauchnye osnovy razvitiia i razmeshcheniia proizvoditel’nykh sil zony Severa na 1971– 1980gg., Programma issledovanii i osnovnye nauchno-metodicheskie polozheniia po teme, 9, 20. 26. Ibid., 31. 27. Slavin, Osvoenie Severa Sovetskogo Soiuza, 83. 28. Tatiana Fedorovna Mel’nik, “Yagrinskii ITL v Molotovske,” in Katorga i ssylka na Severe Rossii. Sbornik statei, ed. Tatiana Fedorovna Mel’nik (Archangelsk: Kira, 2006); Leonid Shmigel’skii, “Sozdat’ Iagrinlag . . . ,” in Severodvinsk: ispytanie na prochnost’. Ocherki, vospominaniia, issledovaniia, ed. Andrei Maslennikov (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998); Leonid Shmigel’skii, “Pamiatnik Leonidu Koppu,” in Severodvinsk: ispytanie na prochnost, ed. Andrei Maslennikov (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998); Leonid Shmigel’skii, “‘Spetsbiuro’ NKVD,” in Severodvinsk: ispytanie na prochnost’, ed. Andrei Maslennikov (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998); Leonid Shmigel’skii, “Imia v entsyklopedii,” in Severodvinsk: ispytanie na prochnost’, ed. Andrei Maslennikov (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998); Lidiia Cherniaeva, “Viny moiei net . . . ,” in Severodvinsk: ispytanie na prochnost’, ed. Andrei Maslennikov (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998); Valentina Sturova “Zhizn ne slomala,” in Severodvinsk: ispytanie na prochnost, ed. Andrei Maslennikov (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998); Aleksandr Burlov, A ty mne, ulitsa rodnaia . . . O Molotovske-Severodvinske, o druziakh-tovarishchakh i nemnogo o sebe (Severodvinsk: Severnaia Nedelia, 2000), 5–6, 145. 29. During the whole decade of the 1950s, the new stone city was built by the prisoners of Yagrinlag, who constituted a large proportion of the city dwellers. It was also those camp inmates who manufactured the only furniture available in Molotovsk. The camp was officially closed in 1961; during the 1940s about eighty thousand inmates worked in Molotovsk, according to unofficial data. “Perepiska obkoma partii s SM SSSR i RSFSR, ministerstvami, vedomstvami po voprosam raboty zavoda 402 i stroitel’nogo tresta 203 (23 April 1954–1 November 1954), l. 23: Latunov, sekretar’ Arkhangelskogo obkoma KPSS – Sovet ministrov SSSR, 13 November 1954” (Gosudarstvennyi Archiv Arkhangelskoi oblasti [henceforth GAAO], Odel dokumentov social’no-politicheskoi istorii [henceforth ODSPI], f. 296, op. 2, d. 1883); and the following correspondence with the Council of Ministers, the Regional Party Committee, shipbuilding plant No. 402 and construction trust No. 203. The latter was the agency engaging the inmates. Cf. Andrei Maslennikov, ed., Severodvinsk: Ispytanie na prochnost’ (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998); A. G. Gizetdinov, “Poslevoennye gody,” in EPM—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1 (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 2004), 53–55. In the early 1950s, the only furniture available to Molotovsk residents was produced by camp inmates. A. A. Parshinov, “Aleksandr Vsil’evich Dubinin—vtoroj director predpriiatiia,” in EPM—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1 (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 2004), 202.

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30. M. B. Balova, and P. V. Lizunov, “Razvitie voennogo korablestroeniia na Russkom Severe v pervye desiatiletiia kholodnoi voiny,” in Kholodnaia voina v Arktike, ed. M. N. Suprun (Arkhangelsk: Solti, 2009) 201–9; E. I. Baev, Stroitel’stvo Sevmashpredpriiatiem pervykh atomnykh podvodnykh lodok sovetskogo Voenno-Morskogo Flota (Severodvinsk: Redaktsionno-izdatel’skii otdel Sevmashvtuza, 1999), 12–17; cf. N. M. Lazarev, Pervye sovetskie atomnye podvodnye lodki (Moscow: Paleia, 1997); N. A. Dollezhal’, K sozdaniiu pervoi atomnoi podvodnoi lodki (Moscow: NIKIET, 1996). 31. “Gorod korabelov,” in Severodvinsk: Ispytanie na prochnost’, ed. Andrei Maslennikov (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998), 331–75; EPM—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1 (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 2004); N. M. Shevchenko, ed., Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk o sozdanii i razvitii pervichnoi profsoiuznoi organizatsii GUP “PO Sevmash” (Severodvinsk: Sudosroienie, 2001). 32. On the Soviet military-industrial complex, see I. V. Bystrova, Sovetskii voenno-promyshlennyi kompleks: problemy stanovleniia i razvitiia (1930–1938-e gody) (Moscow: Nauka, 2006); I. V. Bystrova, Kholodnaia voina 1945–1960g.g. Tokio—Moskva—Vashington (Moscow: IDEL, 2009). 33. T. N. Pozdeeva, “Materialy ekspozitsii ‘Severodvinsk—gorod korabelov i moriakov,’ Severodvinskii gorodskoi kraevedcheskii muzei; Leonid Shmigel’skii: Zvezdnye chasy Sevmasha,” in Severodvinsk. Ispytanie na prochnost’, ed. Andrei Maslennikov (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998). On the Soviet closed cities, see Brown, Plutopia; Sergei I. Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960–1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); Michael Edelstein, Maria Tysiachniouk, and Lyudmila V. Smirnova, eds., Cultures of Contamination: Legacies of Pollution in Russia and the U.S. (Amsterdam: Elsevier JAI, 2007); Sebastian Schlegel, Der “Weisse Archipel”. Sowjetische Atomstädte 1945–1991 (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2006); Natalia Viktorovna Mel’nikova, Fenomen zakrytogo atomnogo goroda (Ekaterinburg: Bank kul’turnoi informatsii, 2006); Evgenii Animitsa, ed., Zakrytye atomnye goroda Rossii (Ekaterinburg: Ural. Gos. Ekon. Un-ta, 2002); Kate Brown, “Gridded Lives: Why Kazakhstan and Montana Are Nearly the Same Place,” American Historical Review 106, no. 1 (2001); Georgi Lappo and Pawel Poljan, Transformation der geschlossenen Städte Russlands (Cologne: Bundesinstitut für Ostwissenschaftliche und Internationale Studien, 1997); Richard H. Rowland, “Russia’s secret Cities,” Post-Soviet Geography and Economics 37 (1996). 34. Aleksandr Bobretsov, “Stroki biografii. Sudostroi—Molotovsk—Severodvinsk,” in Severodvinsk. Ispytanie na prochnost’, ed. Andrei Maslennikov (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998). 35. A total of 3,351 new residents came in 1978, and 2,471 in 1982. Godovye otchety po mekhanicheskomu peredvizheniiu naseleniia za 1978g., “l. 13: Svedeniia o peredvizhenii naseleniia zaregistrirovannogo v gorodskikh i sel’skikh mestnostiakh (po postupivshim otryvnym talonam adresnych listkov za 1978 god)” (GAAO, f. 1892, op. 24, d. 4684); Otchety. Mekhanicheskoe peredvizhenie naseleniia za 1982g, “l. 18: Svedeniia o peredvizhenii naseleniia zaregistrirovannogo v gorodskikh i sel’skikh mestnostiakh (po postupivshim otryvnym talonam adresnych listkov za 1982 god)” (GAAO, f. 1892, op. 24, d. 8453). 36. On young professionals during the Brezhnev era, see Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation (New York: Oxford Uni-

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37.

38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

versity Press, 2012); David L. Ruffley, Children of Victory: Young Specialists and the Evolution of Soviet Society (Westpoint, CT: Praeger, 2003). On the Soviet cult of technology, see Vail’ and Genis, 60-e; Erik P. Hoffmann and Robbin F. Laird, Technocratic Socialism: The Soviet Union in the Advanced Industrial Era (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985); Loren Graham, ed., Science and the Soviet Social Order (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Paul R. Josephson, “‘Projects of the Century’ in Soviet History: Large-Scale Technologies from Lenin to Gorbachev,” Technology and Culture 36, no. 3 (July 1995); Robert Kluge, Der sowjetische Traum vom Fliegen. Analyseversuch eines gesellschaftlichen Phänomens (Munich: Sagner, 1997); Klaus Gestwa, “Technik als Kultur der Zukunft. Der Kult um die ‘Stalinschen Großbauten des Kommunismus,’” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 30, no. 1 (2004); Klaus Gestwa, “Herrschaft und Technik in der spät- und poststalinistischen Sowjetunion. Machtverhältnisse auf den ‘Großbauten des Kommunismus’, 1948– 1964,” Osteuropa 51 (2001); Klaus Gestwa, Die Stalinschen Grossbauten des Kommunismus, Sowjetische Technik- und Umweltgeschichte 1948–1967 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010); Ekaterina Emeliantseva, “Tekhnika i emotsii na atomnoi podvodnoi lodke (1960–1990е gg.),” in Rossiiskaia imperiia chuvstv. Podkhody k kul’turnoi istorii emotsii, ed. Ia. Plamper, Sh. Shakhadat, and M. Elie (Moscow: Neprikosnovennyi zapas, 2009). Cf. Vail’ and Genis, 60-e, 126–38; Hoffmann and Laird, Technocratic Socialism; Graham, Science and the Soviet Social Order; Josephson, “‘Projects of the Century’ in Soviet History”; Kluge, Der sowjetische Traum vom Fliegen; Gestwa, “Technik als Kultur der Zukunft”; Gestwa, “Herrschaft und Technik in der spät- und poststalinistischen Sowjetunion”; Gestwa, Die Stalinschen Grossbauten des Kommunismus; Emeliantseva, “Technika i emotsii na atomnoi podvodnoi lodke”; Eva Maurer et al., eds., Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). M. B. Balova, “Predposylki i osobennosti razvitiia voennogo korablestroeniia na evropeiskom severe Rossii v 1920–1950-e gody” (PhD thesis, Northern Arctic Federal University Archangelsk, 2011), 65; M.P.K. (*1923), male, interview, Severodvinsk, September 2013. Balova, “Predposylki i osobennosti razvitiia voennogo korablestroenia,” 71–72. Ibid., 151. Sbornik zakonov SSSR i ukazov Prezidiuma Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR (1938-iiul’ 1956gg.) (Moscow: Iuridicheskaia literatura, 1956), 378–80. “Perepiska s part. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam, sviazannym s primeneniem deistviia zakonodatel’stva O l’gotach dlja lic, rabotaiushchikh v raionach Krainego Severa’ 28 January 1956–26 December 1956” (GAAO, ODSPI, f.296, op.3, d.104), l. 69–70; Sovet Ministrov SSSR, “Postanovlenie ot 10 noiabria 1967, nr. 1029, Moskva Kreml’” (GAAO, ODSPI, Arkhivnaja vypiska, December 6, 2006). Cf. Burlov, A ty mne, ulitsa rodnaia, 36. B. A. Polushin, “Nachalo sozdaniia pervoi APL,” in EPM—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1 (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 2004), 165; I. M. Belakovskii, “Vospominaniia i razdum’ia o rabote i liudiakh,” in EPM—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1 (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa 2004), 178, 190; T.N.P. (*1965), female, interview, Severodvinsk, April 2011. L.I.I (*1947), female and V.N.I. (*1945), male, interview, Severodvinsk, June 2015.

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46. Sovet Ministrov SSSR, “Postanovlenie ot 10 noiabria 1967, nr. 1029”; B. M. Aristidov, “Pomoshnik direktora predpriiatiia po kadram v 1947–1961 godakh: Organizatsiia raboty s kadrami—otvetstvennaia zadacha,” in Flagman otrasli. Ocherki, stat’i, vospominaniia, vol 2 (Severodvinsk: PO “Sevmashpredpriiatie,” 1991), 317. Other hierarchies took place instead though. Workers on submarine construction sites within the plant received 10 to 20 percent higher salaries than on shipbuilding sites and additional payment for dangerous work. By other workers who did not see any difference it was perceived as unfair. EPM—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1 (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa 2004), 312, 341. The information about radiation on submarine construction sites was suppressed and also not taken seriously by the population. Cf. Igor’ Bagrianskii, Vsemu svoi chas (Archangelsk: Pravda Severa, 2010), 424. Any information on this aspect in Severodvinsk is still classified. 47. Sovet Ministrov SSSR, “Postanovlenie ot 10 noiabria 1967, nr. 1029.” 48. The Nenets National District (okrug) became later an autonomous district. 49. Spravochnik po klimatu SSSR 1, 62–63. 50. “Proekt postanovleniia Sovmina SSSR i proekt Ukaza Prezidiuma Verkh. Soveta SSSR,” 6, 8–9, 65–69, 112. 51. Ibid., 121. 52. M.P.K. (*1923), male, interview, Severodvinsk, September 2013. 53. Semen Tiukachev, “Ivan Pliusnin,” Severnyi rabochii, 13 March 2003. 54. Ibid. 55. M.P.K. (*1923), male, interview, Severodvinsk, September 2013. 56. The military had a special status within the Far North regulations, and officers who remained after finishing their service in the northern area were eligible for additional single payments of 1,000 rubles. “Perepiska s part. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam…, 28 January 1956–26 December 1956” l. 122. 57. Ibid., l. 69–70. 58. Ibid., l. 84–85. 59. “Perepiska s part. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam, sviazannym s primeneniem deistviia zakonodatel’stva ‘O l’gotakh dlia lic, rabotaiushchikh v raionakh Krainego Severa’ 01 January 1957–18 December1957” (GAAO, ODSPI, f.296 op.3, d. 210), l. 30– 31; “Perepiska s part. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam, sviazannym s primeneniem deistviia zakonodatel’stva ‘O l’gotakh dlia lic, rabotaiushchikh v raionakh Krainego Severa’ 18 January 1960–11 March 1960” (GAAO, ODSPI, f.296, op.3, d. 596), l. 2–4. 60. “Perepiska s part. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam… 01 January 1957–18 December 1957,” l. 81, 83; “Perepiska s part. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam, sviazannym s primeneniem deistviia zakonodatel’stva ‘O l’gotakh dlia lic, rabotaiushchikh v raionakh Krainego Severa’ 14 January 1959–8 December 1959” (GAAO, ODSPI, f.296, op.3, d. 457), l. 39–40, 63, 66, 70, 71, 72. 61. “Perepiska s part. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam…, 14 January 1959–8 December 1959,” l. 43, 68. 62. “Perepiska s par. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam…, 18 January 1960–11 December 1960,” l. 1. 63. “Perepiska s part. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam…, 28 January 1956–26 December 1956,” l. 4, 6.

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64. Boris Linshits, “Ulybka Khrushcheva,” in Viza vremeni, ili Rasskazy zhurnalista, rabotavshego vo vremena Khrushcheva—Brezhneva—Andropova—Chernenko—Gorbacheva—El’tsina—Putina, ed. Boris Linshits (Severodvinsk: Severnaia Nedelia, 2002), 254; “Protokol soveshchaniia v obkome KPSS, programma, vystupleniia uchastnikov mitinga i drugie dokumenty o prebyvanii v g. Arkhangelske pervogo sekretaria, predsedatelia Soveta Ministrov SSSR t. Khrushcheva Nikity Sergeevicha 22 July 1962–25 September 1962: Rech tovarishcha N.S. Khrushcheva na mitinge na kombinate imeni V.I. Lenina 23 iiulia 1962 goda,” (GAAO, ODSPI, f. 296, op. 3, d. 833), l. 27; “Protokol soveshchaniia v obkome KPSS po itogam poseshcheniia tov. N.S. Khrushchevym nashei oblasti 24 iiulia 1962 goda,” l. 34ff. 65. “Protokol soveshchaniia v obkome KPSS, programma, 22 July 1962–25 September 1962,” l. 21. 66. Ibid., l. 28, 32. 67. V. M. Pirogov, “Direktor professional’no-technicheskogo uchilishcha nr. 1 goroda Severodvinska v 1960–1966 gg.: Shest’ bespokoinykh let. Direktor GPTU-1 vspominaet,” Flagman otrasli 3: 524; M.E.A (*1948), male, interview, St Petersburg, July 2015. 68. On consumption politics and culture in post-Stalinist Soviet Union, see Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); Monica Rüthers, Moskau bauen von Lenin bis Chruščev. Öffentliche Räume zwischen Utopie, Terror und Alltag (Vienna: Böhlau, 2007); Juliane Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Sergei I. Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City; Anne E. Gorsuch, All This Is Your World: Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad after Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Natalya Chernyshova, Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era (New York: Routledge, 2013); Steven E. Harris, Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Press, 2013); Catriona Kelly, St. Petersburg: Shadows of the Past (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). 69. S. V. Slavin, Sovetskii Sever (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1980), 60; S. V. Slavin, Promyshlennoe i transportnoe, 291–93. 70. G.M. Danishevskii, Akklimatizatsiia cheloveka na Severe (Moscow: Medgiz, 1955); G.M. Danishevskii, Patologiia cheloveka i profilaktika zabolevanii na Severe (Moscow: Meditsina, 1968). 71. “Protokol soveshchaniia v obkome KPSS, programma, 22 July 1962–25 September 1962,” l. 29. 72. “Dokumenty postoiannoi komissii severodvinskogo gorsoveta po stroitel’stvu (16 June 1973–31 March 1975)” (Municipal’nyi Arkhiv Severodvinska, f. 12, op. 1, d. 848), l. 9–10. See especially Protokol Nr.1 (12 July 1973), l. 73–75: Protokol Nr. 10 (18 November 1974); Bobrecov, “Stroki biografii,” 461; Viktor Petrushin, Na beregakh Dviny i Kud’my. Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk (Archangelsk: Pravda Severa, 2004), 133–35, 174–75. 73. B. M. Aristidov, “Pomoshnik direktora predpriiatiia po kadram v 1947–1961 godakh,” 316.

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74. On the cultural significance of weather emotions, see Albert Baiburin and Alexandra Piir, “When We Were Happy: Remembering Soviet Holidays,” in Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet Style, ed. Marina Balina and Evgeny Dobrenko (New York: Anthem Press, 2011), 180. On the cultural significance of exceptional climate, see also Stammler-Gossman, “Reshaping the North of Russia”; Florian Stammler and Gertrude Eilmsteiner-Saxinger, eds., Biography, Shift-Labour and Socialisation in a Northern Industrial City—The Far North: Particularities of Labour and Human Socialisation. Proceedings of the International Conference in Novy Urengoy, Russia, 4th–6th December 2008 (Rovaniemi: Arctic Centre, 2010); Katharina Kucher, “Der Fall Noril’sk. Stadt, Kultur und Geschichte unter Extrembedingungen,” in Mastering Russian Spaces: Raum und Raumbewältigung als Probleme der russischen Geschichte, ed. Karl Schlögel (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011), 129–48. 75. Peskov, “Nepridumannye rasskaziki,” 343–44. 76. L. A. Los’ev, “Zapiski veterana konstruktora,” in EMP—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1 (Archangelsk: Pravda Severa, 2004), 253. 77. S. A. Rudyi, “Professiia—gidroakustik,” in EMP—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1 (Archangelsk: Pravda Severa, 2004), 407. 78. E. B. Krysanova, “Inzhener-konstruktor, rukovoditel’ brigady ratsyonalizatorov, pochetnyi veteran predpriiatiia, Moi put’ dlinoiu . . . ,” in Flagman otrasli. Ocherki, stat’i, vospominaniia, vol. 4 (Severodvinsk: FGIUP “Proizvodstvennoe ob’edinenie “Sevmashpredpriiatie,” 2006), 444. 79. V. I. Klimenko, “Eto vremia navsegda v pamiati moiei,” EMP—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1 (Archangelsk: Pravda Severa, 2004), 356. 80. B. L. Rutkovskii, “Lodki i liudi,” EMP—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1 (Archangelsk: Pravda Severa, 2004), 400. 81. Erik Kovalev and Andrei Sakseev, Vozvrashchennye bezdnoi. Zapiski podvodnikov (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2002), 81. 82. V. N. Zuev, “Sekretar’ partkoma Sevmashpredpriiatiia v 1977–1987 godakh, Vsegda vperedi,” in Flagman otrasli. Ocherki, stat’i, vospominaniia, vol. 4 (Severodvinsk: FGIUP “Proizvodstvennoe ob’edinenie “Sevmashpredpriiatie,” 2006): 53; cf. Severodvinsk. Fotoal’bom (Severodvinsk: Severnaia Nedelia, 1988), 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 18; M. M. Ostrochenko and A. M. Ostrochenko, Severodvinsk—gorod korabelov. Istoricheskii ocherk (Severodvinsk: Severnaia Nedelia, 1997). 83. Shmigel’skii, “Sozdat’ Iagrinlag . . . ,” 200; Boris Linshits and Evgenii Velikhov, “Znachitel’nuiu chast’ svoiei zhizni ia posviashchaiu Severodvinsku,” in Viza vremeni, ili Rasskazy zhurnalista, rabotavshego vo vremena Khrushcheva—Brezhneva—Andropova—Chernenko—Gorbacheva—El’tsina—Putina, ed. Boris Linshits (Severodvinsk: Severnaia Nedelia, 2002), 239–40; Sergei Bondarevskii, “Dvadtsatyi otdel,” in Severodvinsk. Ispytanie na prochnost’, ed. Andrei Maslennikov (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998), 228; Sergei Bogoliubov, “Direktor zavoda Nr. 402 v 1942–1949 gg., Perelom” in Severodvinsk. Ispytanie na prochnost’, ed. Andrei Maslennikov (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998), 339–46. 84. S. V. Slavin, Sovetskii Sever, 171, 173. 85. O Severe, o zhizni, o liubvi (Severodvinsk: Severnaia Nedelia, 1991), 38. 86. “Protokol proizvodstvennykh soveshchanii” (GAAO, f. 2795, op. 5, d. 125), l. 7–8, Protool no. 5, April 25, 1974; cf. Ekaterina Emeliantseva, “The Cult of Secrecy as an

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Element of Community Cohesion and Commodity on Negotiations: The Case of the Closed City of Severodvinsk during the Cold War,” in Soviet Secret Cities during the Cold War, ed. Xenia Vytuleva (New York: Harriman Institute, Columbia University, 2012). 87. Aleksandr Ipatov, Forever. Severodvinsk. Navsegda: Stikhi i pesni (s videoprilozheniem) (Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 2012), 65. 88. Cf. Marc Elie’s contribution to this volume on experts’ discourses about snow avalanches in Soviet Central Asia during the 1960s–1980s. 89. For similar arguments in the discussion on the end of the Soviet Union and the potential for change, see Stephen Lovell, The Soviet Union: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 7, 141–42; Stephen Lovell, The Shadow of War 13–14, 318–19. Cf. also Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, 282–91; Neringa Klumbytė and Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, “Introduction: What Was Late Socialism?,” in Soviet Society in the Era of Late Socialism, 1964–1985, ed. Neringa Klumbytė and Gulnaz Sharafutdinova (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), 11–12.

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edited by Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman, 241–60. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. McNeill, John R., and Corinna R. Unger, eds. Environmental Histories of the Cold War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Mel’nik, Tatiana Fedorovna. “Yagrinskii ITL v Molotovske.” In Katorga i ssylka na Severe Rossii. Sbornik statei, edited by Tatiana Fedorovna Mel’nik, 216–44. Archangelsk: Kira, 2006. Mel’nikova, Natalia Viktorovna. Fenomen zakrytogo atomnogo goroda. Ekaterinburg: Bank kul’turnoi informatsii, 2006. Nauchnye osnovy razvitiia i razmeshcheniia proizvoditel’nykh sil zony Severa na 1971– 1980gg. Programma issledovanii i osnovnye nauchno-metodicheskie polozheniia po teme. Moscow: GOSPLAN SSSR. Sovet po izucheniiu proizvoditel’nykh sil, 1967. O Severe, o zhizni, o liubvi. Severodvinsk: Severnaia Nedelia, 1991. Ostrochenko, M. M., and A. M. Ostrochenko. Severodvinsk—gorod korabelov. Istoricheskii ocherk. Severodvinsk: Severnaia Nedelia, 1997. Otchety. Mechanicheskoe peredvizhenie naseleniia za 1982g. “l. 18: Svedeniia o peredvizhenii naseleniia zaregistrirovannogo v gorodskikh i sel’skikh mestnostiakh (po postupivshim otryvnym talonam adresnych listkov za 1982 god).” Gosudarstvennyi Archiv Arkhangelskoi oblasti, f. 1892, op. 24, d. 8453. Parshinov, A. A. “Aleksandr Vasil’evich Dubinin—vtoroi direktor predpriiatiia.” In EPM— ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1, 201–5. Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 2004. “Perepiska obkoma partii s SM SSSR i RSFSR, ministerstvami, vedomstvami po voprosam raboty zavoda 402 i stroitel’nogo tresta 203 (23 April 1954-1 November 1954). l. 23: Latunov, sekretar’ Arkhangelskogo obkoma KPSS—Sovet ministrov SSSR, 13 November 1954.” Gosudarstvennyi Archiv Arkhangelskoi oblasti, Odel dokumentov social’no-politicheskoi istorii, f. 296, op. 2, d. 1883. “Perepiska s part. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam, sviazannym s primeneniem deistviia zakonodatel’stva O l’gotach dlja lic, rabotaiushchikh v raionach Krainego Severa’ 28 January 1956–26 December 1956.” Gosudarstvennyi Archiv Arkhangelskoi oblasti, Odel dokumentov social’no-politicheskoi istorii, f.296, op.3, d.104. “Perepiska s part. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam, sviazannym s primeneniem deistviia zakonodatel’stva ‘O l’gotakh dlia lic, rabotaiushchikh v raionakh Krainego Severa’ 01 January 1957–18 December 1957.” Gosudarstvennyi Archiv Arkhangelskoi oblasti, Odel dokumentov social’no-politicheskoi istorii, f.296 op.3, d. 210. “Perepiska s part. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam, sviazannym s primeneniem deistviia zakonodatel’stva ‘O l’gotakh dlia lic, rabotaiushchikh v raionakh Krainego Severa’ 14 January 1959–8 December 1959.” Gosudarstvennyi Archiv Arkhangelskoi oblasti, Odel dokumentov social’no-politicheskoi istorii, f.296, op.3, d. 457. “Perepiska s part. Komitetami oblasti po voprosam, sviazannym s primeneniem deistviia zakonodatel’stva ‘O l’gotakh dlia lic, rabotaiushchikh v raionakh Krainego Severa’ 18 January 1960–11 March 1960.” Gosudarstvennyi Archiv Arkhangelskoi oblasti, Odel dokumentov social’no-politicheskoi istorii, f.296, op.3, d. 596. Peskov, E. B. “Nepridumannye rasskaziki.” In EMP—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1, 340–54. Archangelsk: Pravda Severa, 2004.

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Peterson, Nicole, and Kenneth Broad. “Climate and Weather Discourse in Anthropology: From Determinism to Uncertain Futures.” In Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions, edited by Susan A. Crate and Mark Nuttall, 70–86. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2009. Petrushin, Viktor. Na beregakh Dviny i Kud’my. Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk (Archangelsk: Pravda Severa, 2004). Pirogov, V. M. “Direktor professional’no-tekhnicheskogo uchilishcha nr. 1 goroda Severodvinska v 1960–1966 gg.: Shest’ bespokoinykh let. Direktor GPTU-1 vspominaet.” In Flagman otrasli. Ocherki, stat’i, vospominaniia, vol. 3, 523–45. Severodvinsk: PO “Sevmashpredpriiatie,” 1998. Polushin, B. A. “Nachalo sozdaniia pervoi APL.” In EPM—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1, 157–65. Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 2004. Postanovlenie VTsIK i SNK. “O l’gotakh dlia komandiruemykh na raboty v otdalennye mestnosti RSFSR,” Sobranie uzakononenii RSFSR, 25 July 1923. Pozdeeva, T. N. “Materialy ekspozitsii ‘Severodvinsk—gorod korabelov i moriakov,’ Severodvinskii gorodskoi kraevedcheskii muzei. “Proekt postanovleniia Sovmina SSSR i proekt Ukaza Prezidiuma Verkh, Soveta SSSR ob uporiadochenii l’got dlia lic, rabotaiushchikh v raionakh Krainego Severa, v sev. i otdalennykh raionakh, instruktsiia po primeneniiu dannogo Ukaza Prezidiuma Verkh. Soveta, t. 2, 1957–1958.” RGANI, f.5, op.30, d. 218. “Proekty postanovlenii Sovmina SSSR ob uporiadochenii zarabotnoi platy i perevode na sokrashchennyi rabochii den’ rabochikh i sluzhashchikh v severnykh raionakh SSSR, raschety i obosnovaniia k nim, 1957–1958.” RGANI, f.5, op.30, d. 217. “Protokol soveshchaniia v obkome KPSS, programma, vystupleniia uchastnikov mitinga i drugie dokumenty o prebyvanii v g. Arkhangelske pervogo sekretaria, predsedatelia Soveta Ministrov SSSR t. Khrushcheva Nikity Sergeevicha 22 July 1962–25 September 1962: Rech tovarishcha N.S. Khrushcheva na mitinge na kombinate imeni V.I. Lenina 23 iiulia 1962 goda.” GAAO, ODSPI, f. 296, op. 3, d. 833. “Protokoly proizvodstvennykh soveshchanii.” Gosudarstvennyi Archiv Arkhangelskoi oblasti, f. 2795, op. 5, d. 125. Rabinovich, Alla Dmitrievna. “Osobennosti pravovogo regulirovaniia truda rabotnikov Krainego Severa.” Diss., Akademiia truda i social’nykh otnoshenii, Moscow, 2007. Raleigh, Donald J. Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Rolf, Malte. “Importing ‘the Spatial turn’ to Russia: Recent Studies on the Spatialization of Russian History.” Kritika 11, no. 2 (2010): 359–80. Rowland, Richard H. “Russia’s Secret Cities.” Post-Soviet Geography and Economics 37 (1996): 426–62. Rozhanskii, Mikhail. “‘Ottepel’ na sibirskom moroze. Ustnaia istoriia udarnykh stroek.” Otechestvennye zapiski 5, no. 50 (2012). Retrieved 3 March 2012 from http://maga zines.russ.ru/oz/2012/5/21r.html. Rüthers, Monica. Moskau bauen von Lenin bis Chruščev. Öffentliche Räume zwischen Utopie, Terror und Alltag. Vienna: Böhlau, 2007. Ruffley, David L. Children of Victory. Young Specialists and the Evolution of Soviet Society. Westpoint, CT: Praeger, 2003.

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Rutkovskii, B. L. “Lodki i liudi.” In EMP—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1, 399−406. Archangelsk: Pravda Severa, 2004. Rudyi, S. A. “Professiia—gidroakustik.” In EMP—ERA—SPO ‘Arktika’. Vospominaniia veteranov, vol. 1, 407–11. Archangelsk: Pravda Severa, 2004. Sbornik zakonov SSSR i ukazov Prezidiuma Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR (1938-iiul’ 1956gg.). Moscow: Iuridicheskaia literatura, 1956. Schenk, Frithjof B. “Mental Maps. Die Konstruktion von geographischen Räumen in Europa seit der Aufklärung.” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 28, no. 3 (2002): 493–514. Schlegel, Sebastian. Der “Weisse Archipel”. Sowjetische Atomstädte 1945–1991. Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2006. Schlögel, Karl, ed. Mastering Russian Spaces. Raum und Raumbewältigung als Probleme der russischen Geschichte. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011. Schmid, Ulrich. “Eurasien oder Skandoslavien? Der ‘Norden’ im kulturellen Selbstverständnis Russlands.” Osteuropa 61, no. 2–3 (2011): 327–45. Severodvinsk. Fotoal’bom. Severodvinsk: Severnaia Nedelia, 1988. Shevchenko, N. M., ed. Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk o sozdanii i razvitii pervichnoi profsoiuznoi ogranizatskii GUP “PO Sevmash.” Severodvinsk: Sudosroienie, 2001. Shmigel’skii, Leonid. “Sozdat’ Iagrinlag. . . .” In Severodvinsk: ispytanie na prochnost’. Ocherki, vospominaniia, issledovaniia, edited by Andrei Maslennikov, 199–210. Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998. ———. “Pamiatnik Leonidu Koppu.” In Severodvinsk: ispytanie na prochnost, edited by Andrei Maslennikov, 215–18. Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998. ———. “‘Spetsbiuro’ NKVD.” In Severodvinsk: ispytanie na prochnost’, edited by Andrei Maslennikov, 219–27. Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998. ———. “Imia v entsyklopedii.” In Severodvinsk: ispytanie na prochnost’, edited by Andrei Maslennikov, 240–44. Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998. ———. “Zvezdnye chasy Sevmasha.” In Severodvinsk. Ispytanie na prochnost’, edited by Andrei Maslennikov, 406–25. Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998. Siegelbaum, Lewis H. Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. Slavin, S. V. Promyshlennoe i transportnoe osvoenie Severa SSSR. Moscow: Ekonomgiz, 1961. ———. Sovetskii Sever. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1980. ———. Osvoenie Severa Sovetskogo Soiuza. Moscow: Nauka, 1982. Slezkine, Yuri. Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994. Sovet Ministrov SSSR. “Postanovlenie ot 10 noiabria 1967, nr. 1029, Moskva Kreml.’” Gosudarstvennyi Archiv Arkhangelskoi oblasti, Odel dokumentov social’no-politicheskoi istorii, Arkhivnaja vypiska, December 6, 2006. Spravochnik po klimatu SSSR, vypusk 1, Arkhangelskaia i Vologotskaia oblasti, Karel’skaia i Komi ASSR, chast’ II: temperatura vozdukha i pochvy. Leningrad: Gidrometeoizdat, 1965. Stammler, Florian, and Gertrude Eilmsteiner-Saxinger, eds. Biography, Shift-Labour and Socialisation in a Northern Industrial City—The Far North: Particularities of Labour and Human Socialisation. Proceedings of the International Conference in Novy Urengoy, Russia, 4th–6th December 2008. Rovaniemi: Arctic Centre, 2010. Retrieved 12

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February 2014 from http://www.arcticcentre.org/InEnglish/RESEARCH/SustainableDevelopment—Research-Group/Anthropology-research-team/Publications/Biogr aphy,-Shift-labour-and-Socialisation-in-a-Northern-Industrial-City. Stammler-Gossman, Anna. “Reshaping the North of Russia: Towards a Conception of Space; Position Paper for the 5th NRF open Assembly, September 24–28 2008.” Northern Research Forum. Retrieved 20 September 2012 from http://www.nrf.is/Open per cent20Meetings/Anchorage/Position percent20Papers/StammlerGrossman_5thNRF_ position_paper_session4.pdf. Strauss, Sarah, and Ben Orlove. “Up in the Air: The Anthropology of Weather and Climate.” In Weather, Climate, Culture, edited by Sarah Strauss and Ben Orlove, 3–14. Oxford: Berg, 2003. Sturova, Valentina. “Zhizn ne slomala.” In Severodvinsk: ispytanie na prochnost, edited by Andrei Maslennikov, 236–39. Severodvinsk: Pravda Severa, 1998. Tiukachev, Semen. “Ivan Pliusnin.” Severnyi rabochii, 13 March 2003. Retrieved 12 February 2014 from http://www.arhpress.ru/sevrab/2003/3/13/23.shtml. Troebst, Stefan. “Nordosteuropa: Begriff—Traditionen—Strukturen.” Kommune. Forum für Politik, Ökonomie, Kultur 15, no. 5 (May 1997): 36–42. Retrieved 5 September 2012 from http://www.oeko-net.de/kommune/kommune5-97/ATROEBST.html. Tuchtenhagen, Ralph. “Nordrussland.” In Studienhandbuch Östliches Europa, Bd. 2: Geschichte des Russischen Reiches und der Sowjetunion, edited by Thomas Bohn and Dietmar Neutatz, 312–20. Cologne: Böhlau, 2009. Vail’, Petr, and Aleksandr Genis. 60-e. Mir sovetskogo cheloveka. Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 1996. Ward, Christopher J. Brezhnev’s Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. Winkler, Martina. “Imagining the Arctic, the Russian Way: Concepts and Projects for the Arctic Ocean in the Eighteenth Century.” New Global Studies 7, no. 2 (2013): 73–100. Wolf, Larry. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Yurchak, Alexei. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Zhuk, Sergei I. Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960–1985. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Zuev, V. N. “Sekretar’ partkoma Sevmashpredpriiatiia v 1977–1987 godakh, Vsegda vperedi.” In Flagman otrasli. Ocherki, stat’i, vospominaniia, vol. 4, 53–85. Severodvinsk: FGUP “Proizvodstvennoe ob’edinenie “Sevmashpredpriiatie,” 2006.

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CHAPTER 11

An Exploration of the Self Reinhold Messner’s Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1989 Pascal Schillings

Introduction “Why do it? What is there to prove? Why risk one’s life, leave behind loved ones? Why leave the comforts and security of home?”1 These were some of the questions that Geoff Somers asked in his review of Reinhold Messner’s Antarctica: Both Heaven and Hell for the Geographical Journal, the report about the extreme traveler’s trans-Antarctic expedition of 1989, an expedition that had relied heavily on the physical strength of its two participants, who refused to make use of the vehicles and technological equipment that had become standard in polar exploration at the end of the Cold War era. These were also the questions that many contemporaries asked themselves—and which undoubtedly contributed to the fascination that Messner’s expeditions held for a wider public. One could argue that these questions were also brought up because of a specific situation in the history of exploration that travelers like Messner found themselves in during the second half of the twentieth century, one that was not only of practical importance to them, but also bore some philosophical depth—namely what to do or where to turn after all of the so-called white spots had been erased from the map of the earth. The answer that Messner found for himself sheds a light on one of the strands in the history of exploration in the twentieth century that reflected this problem. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Pole was addressed as the major one of the last white spots to be reached. A race for the pole unfolded that was staged as a competition of national endeavors, with the Norwegian Roald Amundsen as the winner and Robert Falcon Scott as the heroicized second, who died on the return journey. After this, explorers searched for new fields of activity, and until the middle of the century, mountaineering became a new central focus of attention. Toward the end of this era, however, the question arose anew, where to turn—or rather, what to do—and Messner became a leading figure in indicating a new path by proposing mountaineering “by

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fair means” as a new standard, that is, climbing with the least possible technical equipment, leaving no traces in the mountain. However, by 1986 Messner had also reached the peaks of all fourteen eight-thousanders in the world and needed a new perspective again. Messner had considered visiting the Antarctic since 1983 before finally going in December 1986. His plan was to climb Mount Vinson, the highest mountain of the continent. He not only returned having ascended the last of the “Seven Summits,” the highest mountains of each continent, but also brought home the impression that “the Antarctic was accessible,”2 and first contacts to the Adventure Network International, which later carried out the logistics of his expedition, were established. Messner then started organizing a trans-Antarctic journey—the “last trip in the world,” as he labeled the trip in his articles for the German magazine Der Spiegel, to which he sold exclusive rights—on which he, together with his companion for this expedition, Arved Fuchs, embarked in November 1989. The expedition, with its seemingly archaic means of traveling, at first sight seems like a re-enactment of plans originally designed by the polar explorers Wilhelm Filchner and Ernest Shackleton at the beginning of the century. The march across the Antarctic continent from the Ronne Ice Shelf via the South Pole to McMurdo Station took ninety-two days. However, it will be argued here that Messner’s answer to the vanishing white spots on the map can not only be situated in the context of new challenges in a longer history of the exploration of extreme landscapes. It also reflected the changing actors and groups that were interested and active in the polar regions at the end of the Cold War. By reacting to political ambitions, the campaigns of environmentalists, and the increasingly technology-driven exploration of the Antarctic, Messner developed new ways of conceptualizing and speaking about the icy polar landscapes that contrasted sharply with Cold War approaches to the Antarctic by turning to the self and its relationship to nature. Messner’s journey across the southern continent was presented first and foremost as an “exploration of the self.” In order to criticize the technological examination of the Antarctic that to Messner seemed completely detached from the emotions and physical experiences that should in his view dominate human engagement with the polar regions, he developed a complex system of references to traditional means of polar exploration that he mixed with more current trends in Western societies, which witnessed what has sometimes been referred to as a “psychoboom.” While he criticized the ideology and masculine stereotypes that were prominent in the polar exploration of the Heroic Age at the beginning of the century, he picked up expedition plans and methods of traveling of the time. By arranging his travel narrative as a meditation, he distanced himself from traditional ways of narrating the Antarctic and linked it to contemporary discourses of a care for the self. At the same time, he stressed

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his emotional and physical relationship to the polar landscape to show his discomfort with mechanized approaches to the polar landscape and his support for concepts such as an Antarctic world park that environmentalists such as Greenpeace campaigned for.

Running and Writing against Cold War Tractors The event in which Cold War exploration of the polar regions seems to have culminated for Messner and that symbolized everything he opposed to was the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1957–58, which marked the first mechanized crossing of the polar continent. Klaus Dodds considers the expedition “a remarkable achievement given the great distances and difficult terrain involved”3—not to mention the organizational difficulties of a Commonwealth expedition. After the successful completion of the trip, which was—echoing Ernest Shackleton—labeled the “last great journey in the world,” its British leader Vivian Fuchs was knighted. With men driving tractors over the polar ice cap, the expedition lacked the suffering that the polar explorers of the beginning of the century underwent. Yet, the New York Times claimed that the expedition “faced crevasses, snowstorms and winds . . . like the members of the Scott expedition in 1912,”4 and the British perspective on the event as a whole was that it confirmed the British place in the world and in the Antarctic. Messner had a different opinion on the endeavor. To him, the expedition seemed an absurd undertaking: “What technological civilization does on the ice continent, becomes a caricature of this civilization,”5 he quoted the American environmental protector Michael Parfit. Vivian Fuchs’s expedition crossed the Antarctic with “tractors and tracked vehicles . . . , which rolled across the ice like tanks. . . . Vivian Fuchs and his crew sat in ‘Sno-Cats’ which were driven by Chrysler engines and had heated cabins. Four ‘Cats’ roared with rattling tracks over the ice. The scene resembled a tank offensive.”6 The warlike imagery that Messner evoked contrasts with the uninhabited and peaceful Antarctic landscape that is conquered by the machinery. But the expedition’s mode of traveling not only harmed the polar environment, it also affected the expedition members’ health, which to Messner did not lack a certain irony: In an irony of technology, one of the Cat drivers appeared to have been poisoned by engine exhaust fumes. . . . Was it not absurd to undertake a journey in the vastness and stillness of the Antarctic sitting down and thereby constantly exposed to the noise and stink of engines? Trapped in cabins in the purest air on earth, almost to the point of suffocation?7

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This image of the “sad vehicle-tourist, crouched in a capsule and not perceiving anything of the surrounding landscape”8 encapsulated everything that Messner was opposed to in Cold War polar exploration: excessive use of technology, separation from nature, lack of emotional or physical experiences. Distancing himself from this contemporary mechanized mode of polar traveling, Messner had to look back further in history to find models for his own technique.

Bodily Practices: The Antarctic Exploration of the Heroic Age Messner chose the explorers of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration at the beginning of the century as examples for his own polar journey. This concerned his mode of traveling as well as his choice of route. First, polar traveling around 1900 came close to what Messner considered traveling “by fair means”—a technique he had developed in his mountaineering expeditions: traveling with the least possible technical equipment, “with the simplest means.”9 Adopted for the Antarctic, this meant that Messner and Fuchs “renounced all such help, which had not been available to Scott. We marched according to his method for the sake of adventure and Antarctica.”10 Messner and Fuchs therefore used narrow telemark skis and “Eskimo boots” when conditions allowed for their use. Otherwise they used heavy touring skis or walked on their bare boots.11 Further, and if the wind allowed for it, they used sails to travel faster. This led to three basic modes of traveling: “Donkey,” i.e. pulling the sledge in the conventional way (Speed: 2mph max.). 2. “Swallow,” i.e. sailing, stranding on our skis and being pulled along by the sail/wind together with the sledges (Speed: 5–8?mph). 3. “Penguin,” i.e. skiing with outstretched sail, as if we were trying to sail (fly) but couldn’t (Speed: 3–4mph).12

Second, Messner’s expedition was also a re-enactment with regard to the route that it set out to take. After consulting Scott and Ernest Shackleton, the German polar explorer Wilhelm Filchner had developed the plan for a trans-Antarctic expedition to test the so-called barrier hypothesis, which claimed that the Antarctic continent was divided into two landmasses by a barrier and which occupied a number of expeditions of the Heroic Age.13 Shackleton developed a comparable plan for his Endurance expedition, which started three years after Filchner as a trans-Antarctic endeavor.14 Both expeditions failed to even start on their marches, because both expedition ships were caught in pack ice, which kept them from a successful landing on the Antarctic continent. However, Messner was fascinated by Shackleton’s expedition, which

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also showed in the echoing of Shackleton’s rhetoric—while apart from this, Messner very consciously deconstructed the narratives of his predecessors: “The march, which Shackleton had called ‘the most fascinating land journey on earth,’ was conceivable. And it was still available. A singular situation! In 1989, seventy-five years after Shackleton’s start, I wanted to make a journey in such a way as no one had attempted it before.”15 Similarly, his companion Arved Fuchs stated: It is really the complete big adventure. The ultimate which can be done in Antarctica, yes, even on ice generally. The Arctic ocean has been crossed, on skis and with dog sledges; the Antarctic without machines so far has not. In that this problem represents for me a tremendous attraction. This task, again with a historical background, absorbs me totally.16

Messner consequently called the series he published in the German magazine Der Spiegel “The Last Trip on Earth.”17 While Messner had adapted the plans and means of traveling from his predecessors in the Antarctic, he strongly disconnected himself from the ideological implications that polar exploration had at the turn of the century. The Antarctic exploration of the Heroic Age was driven by a complex mixture of different motives. Hopes for personal fame, commercial interests, scientific research, and national prestige ranked high among them.18 While declining the importance of any of these for his own expedition—although it must be acknowledged that Messner confessed that his expeditions were to a certain extent driven by the lust for adventure and “a hunger for recognition”19— Messner most radically broke with the last, deconstructing the heroic images of polar exploration in general, but the image of Scott in particular. Attesting himself an “anti-national” attitude, Messner explained that he had never taken any flags anywhere, because he felt too small for such heroic gestures in the overwhelming landscapes he crossed.20 While admitting that Scott’s story, compared to those of all the other polar explorers, was the one that occupied him most, Messner raised harsh criticism against his performance and self-aggrandizement, which showed Scott “in the tawdry light of morbid self-sacrifice”:21 Death for Scott had become a theatre piece. Scene: the loneliest place in the world. The public: mankind. Once and for all, we were to learn of what sacrifice the British were capable. This death, beyond the frontiers of sense and pain but reconstructable in the sparse sentences of the final diary pages, was thought of as a symbol: tragedy was not an edifying game; death was much more the living proof of the self-sacrifice of a handful of men.22

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While being ready to accept that Scott elevated himself to the status of a hero, Messner had no sympathy for the fact that Scott “had obviously compelled his companions to play their roles to the end, in order to quash any doubt as to their British heroism.”23 Messner, in this, followed the contemporary discourse of the 1980s concerning polar exploration in general and Scott in particular. While remaining a heroic figure in the decades after his death, in 1979 Roland Huntford published his joined biography of Scott and Amundsen, in which he contested Scott’s popular image. He attempted to uncover Scott as a heroic bungler, lacking in character and organizational skills. In 1985, the book was adapted for television as a docudrama and had a significant influence on Scott’s public image.24 Partaking in the contemporary discourse on Scott, Messner interestingly did not assess Shackleton’s expedition as critically.25 The expeditions of the Heroic Age, however, were in terms of ideology not only important from the point of view of national prestige. Instead, they can also be read from a gender perspective as attempts to put an end to discourses about the decrease of male virtues and manliness in general that found strong resonance around 1900. Social and medical thinking supported the claims of these discourses that modern civilization and especially city life threatened to render men “soft, cowardly and effeminate.”26 This was empirically underlined by statistical surveys. The British recruitment for the Boer War, for instance, proved that 40 to 60 percent of the volunteers were unfit for service. Cures to this were seen in the physically demanding outdoor life that, for instance, a life in the colonies seemed to offer. Further, before 1914 warfare appeared as an ideal means to “remasculinize” men.27 The physical hardships in the service of science that Antarctic exploration generated were in this context ideal images to reaffirm the robustness of British men. The business of narrating male endurance, however, was around 1900 complicated by the fact that giving detailed information on emotions and inner life was considered unmanly. When Louis Bernacchi, member of the Southern Cross expedition led by Carsten Borchgrevink between 1898 and 1900, for instance, published his account of the expedition, the review in the Geographical Journal was favorable in all but one point: “If a criticism may be permitted, we would suggest that rather too much is made of the feelings and thoughts of the members of the expedition, and rather too little of the physical effects of the severe climate.” Although three members of the expedition died on the journey, “Mr. Bernacchi makes light of the discomforts of polar life, and neither he nor the majority of his companions seem to have suffered any injury from their exposure.”28 This interest in physical effects on the explorers’ bodies rather than in thoughts and emotions implied a specific mode of narrating the Antarctic around 1900. Antarctic narratives, such as Scott’s diary, ended on the surface

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of the explorers’ bodies. The only hints of emotions that Scott allowed himself to note in his travel journals were glimpses of the monotony of the situation on the southern journey. On the 27 August 1911, for instance, Scott wrote, “It is monotonous work this; the sledgemeter and theodolite govern the situation.”29 Scott explained the lack of thoughts or feelings in his record two days later by the challenges of the journey: “The marches are terribly monotonous. One’s thoughts wander occasionally to pleasanter scenes and places, but the necessity to keep the course, or some hitch in the surface, quickly brings them back.”30 The only physical appearance of emotions—two explorers crying— occurs in the journals when the latter learn that they will not be part of the party that will make the dash for the pole.31 Instead, after the first part of the journey, during which Scott carefully noted the condition of equipment and animals, the hardships of the expedition and the effects of the Antarctic landscape on the explorers only become visible to the readers through descriptions of the explorers’ physical conditions. In the middle of December, for instance, Scott wrote, “We got fearfully hot this morning and marched in singlets, which became wringing wet; thus uncovered the sun gets at one’s skin, and then the wind, which makes it horribly uncomfortable. Our lips are very sore. We cover them with the soft silk plaster which seems about the best thing for the purpose.”32 On the way back from the pole, physical suffering, of course, becomes more and more apparent: “There is no doubt Evans is a good deal run down—his fingers are badly blistered and his nose is rather seriously congested with frequent frost bites.”33 The ideal medium to support this mode of narrating the Antarctic was photography, as it captured the effects the Antarctic had on the explorers’ bodies. By comparing, for instance, photographs taken of explorers before their departure on sledge journeys and after their return, Kathryn Yusoff argues that the Antarctic manifested itself in these photographs: “Everything is frozen, body and landscape.”34 Through the bodily images that the photographs conveyed, and which gave an impression of the effects that the Antarctic landscape had on the explorers’ bodies, the Antarctic became readable for the contemporaries. “Becoming-icy,” in this sense, was a phenomenon of the physical contact zone between body and landscape, and it was a phenomenon that Messner experienced just as the explorers from the beginning of the century had.35 Although he radically refrained from the motives and ideologies of his predecessors, Messner drew comparisons between their journeys and his. Particularly on the second leg of the expedition, from the South Pole to McMurdo Station, he found similarities between Scott and himself: “With each day our journey became more similar to Scott’s,”36 because “like Scott we were completely dependent on ourselves.”37 Furthermore, his physical experiences appeared to him as parallel to those of Apsley Cherry-Garrard. Also a member of Scott’s final expedition, Cherry-Garrard, together with Edward Wilson and

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Henry Bowers, embarked on a journey through the Antarctic night to secure eggs of emperor penguins for scientific examination. On their way, they had to endure severe hardships and physical pains—Cherry-Garrard described them in his book, The Worst Journey in the World38—which Messner judged to be similar to his own: The dampness got into everything, even in our bones. Our fingers swelled up. Our gloves were icy lumps. On top of this, the drudgery of sledge pulling. Generally, there was no wind. In his book, The Worst Journey in the World, Aspley Cherry-Garrard describes similar sufferings. The winter march to the breeding grounds of the Emperor penguin had been for him and his companions a trip into hell. That was eighty years ago. The world here and the suffering was still the same.39

So, while Messner rejected the ideologies behind the polar exploration of the Heroic Age, he used route plans and especially the British mode of traveling of the time to distance himself from the technified Cold War approach to the Antarctic. There is, however, one last difference between Messner and the polar explorers of the beginning of the century. Where the traditional narratives of the Heroic Age stopped on the surface of the explorers’ bodies, Messner’s focus lay on the inner self, on his thoughts and emotions. Messner, for instance, at times felt the profound “futility” of his endeavor.40 While marching one day, he “began to despair over everything. The absurdity of this trip became not only obvious to me, but I also became painfully aware of it.”41 As he explained, it was only a short step from the overwhelming impressions the landscapes produced “to the absurdity of our crawling along.”42 Still, Messner insisted on the importance of the expedition—interestingly not for any abstract entities, like nations or masculinity, but for himself as a “technology of the self ”: “Our march was important only to us.”43 This turn toward the inner self is the outstanding feature of Messner’s way of narrating the Antarctic, and it distances him not only from the heroic explorers of the beginning of the century, but also from the mechanical approaches of polar exploration the Cold War produced. It can be read as a reflection of broader trends in Western societies, as a specific strand of thinking, speaking, and caring about the self in the times of the so-called psychoboom.

Antarctic Exploration as a “Self Technique” The fact that Messner himself pondered about the absurdity and futility of his endeavor brings the questions from Somers’s review of his book back to mind. Why did Messner undertake this journey? There have been different attempts

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to answer this question. One of the more elaborate ones was brought forward by philosopher Wilhelm Schmid, who interpreted Messner’s expeditions as examples of what he labeled a prototypical modern situation. Stripped of all bonds of tradition, convention, and religion, according to Schmid, the (post) modern individual is freed from all restrictions imposed on it from the outside. Thus forced to develop his own goals, Messner’s reactions to this situation were expeditions into mountain heights, deserts, and the polar regions.44 Rather than explaining Messner’s individual case, however, this analysis summarizes thoughts that already circulated in the contemporary sociological discourse of the 1970s and 1980s. That traditional conceptions, the steadiness and stability of the regulative frameworks of the postwar era, were no longer operating in the 1980s had already been noted by postmodern thinkers and has lately been reaffirmed by the first attempts to historicize the era “after the boom.”45 It thus seems arguable to situate Messner’s Antarctic expedition in the historical situation of this era “after the boom,” which was marked—among other things—by a growing interest in the so-called care for the self. Turning from the political sphere of the Cold War era to the private realms of psychology or spirituality, beginning in the 1970s, a new interest awoke in religious and esoteric knowledge of what became known as New Age—practices and techniques that centered around approaches toward topics such as self-fulfillment, which manifested themselves in a rapidly increasing number of followers, seminars, centers, and stores.46 Focusing on the self and ways of increasing selfknowledge, these attempts of working on the self can be interpreted as being part of a larger—or at least related—development of the same time, which contemporaries labeled the “psychoboom”: the discursive and institutional increase of therapy as a means of self-development and liberating the self.47 What these had in common was the idea of a self that was flexible and that needed careful attention. Discovering the true self, establishing a balance between mind and body, self and world, it was argued, required hard labor, which manifested itself in a number of self techniques. Especially for more esoteric approaches, bodily techniques were considered vital, and meditation became a popular means of achieving these goals.48 As a contemporary of the phenomena just described, Michel Foucault in the early 1980s became “increasingly interested in how a human being turns him- or herself into a subject.”49 This marked an important shift in his work, which found its expression in his growing interest in the so-called technologies of the self: “I am more and more interested in the interaction between oneself and others and in the technologies of individual domination, the history of how an individual acts upon himself, in the technology of self.”50 According to Foucault, there are four general types of technologies—the technologies of production, of sign systems, of power, and of the self—all of which are inter-

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connected. The “technologies of the self ” are those “which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.”51 While Foucault addressed the question of self practices for the GrecoRoman philosophy in the first two centuries AD of the early Roman Empire and for the Christian spirituality in the fourth and fifth centuries of the late Roman Empire, more recent studies inquired into the technologies of the self in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.52 However, the questions addressed by these studies primarily focus on the side of the exercising powers and less on individual actors. Nikolas Rose, for instance, in his book Inventing Our Selves, seeks to trace the influence of the so-called psychosciences, “psychology, psychiatry, and their cognates, [on the ways] in which the contemporary apparatus for ‘being human’ has been put together, [arguing] that psy has played a key role in constituting our current regime of the self as well as itself having been ‘disciplined’ as part of the emergence of this regime.”53 Similarly, Greg Eghigian and others inquire into “the ways in which the human sciences and politics together turned the behaviour and inner workings of individuals—in short, the self—into sites for ambitious scientific, medical, and political projects.”54 In contrast to this, Messner’s Antarctic journey can be read as an individual’s self technique, a means of constituting, expressing, and improving the self. As Messner claimed, “My journeys had nothing to do with tourism, the greatest commercial enterprise on earth. Neither did they serve science. They led away from all paths. For me, traveling in the wilderness was not about the outside world, rather about the world within me. I was the master of my own.”55 This was an ethical as well as an aesthetical endeavor, as the practices that Messner performed on his body (and “soul”) only become “readable” in the written representation that he produced, and which he himself considered an integral part of his work.56 It also shows that the turn to the self as a means of distancing himself from earlier modes of polar writing and current methods of polar exploration was embedded in a broader tendency to address questions of the self, to work on the self, and to speak about the self—Messner’s journey and his narration worked for a large readership as a meditation, because they were familiar with this kind of talking about the self.

“Philosophizing with Legs and Hands” Messner defined this specific approach to exploration and writing about expeditions as his individual approach to mountaineering and extreme touring and

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explained that he had begun “philosophizing with legs and hands, thinking with ‘flying’ lungs and at the pace of a walker.”57 His tours he regarded as artistic endeavors rather than adventurous expeditions: “On my ways, which develop while walking, lines emerge, lines in my head. They are the pieces of art, which I leave behind. They are neither visible nor audible. It is the creation of nothingness.”58 The aim of his expeditions, Messner stated, was the experience of lack and narrowness, a confrontation with doubts, fears, and hopelessness.59 These abstract considerations also affected Messner’s motives for starting on his Antarctic expedition. He stated that he considered experiencing wilderness as his profession and consequently claimed that he was neither a conqueror nor a geographer60—thus disconnecting himself from the realms of politics and science. While the Cold War in the polar regions was characterized by strategic claims over territories, scientific projects to study, and the potential for future exploitation, the aim of his journeys, Messner explained, was to create an image of wilderness for others. Consequently, he not only distanced himself from heroic political gestures—flags, he stated, were “a farce in the ‘home of ice and storm’”61—but also negated any scientific interest: “Arved and I were travelling without any scientific pretension and yet we endeavoured to grasp this white infinity, to assess it, to find a relationship with it.”62 However, the concept of wilderness that he promoted in his writings and interviews linked his project to campaigns of environmental activists that began to become more vocal in the 1980s. Messner thus had clear political and ecological messages to convey. First, he thought of his expedition as a protest against the land seizure claims of the nations represented in the Antarctic: “Were it not a protest against all country names if one were to walk right across the continent: without passport, without permission, without ministry back up?”63 Messner identified the “almost two dozen nations, which have established themselves in the Antarctic since the end of the 1950s, [as] invaders who have made Amundsen’s fear come true that cupidity could destroy the Antarctic.”64 Second, and in accordance with this, he sought to give attention to the ecological concept of a “world park Antarctica.” By the end of the 1980s, Greenpeace had pointed to the ecological damage that the scientific stations produced in the Antarctic—a pollution that Messner took greatest care not to contribute to, without being able to completely avoid it.65 He supported the idea of a world park, “which people should be allowed to visit only under strict conditions.”66 As long as the economic potential of the Antarctic was unknown, he argued, it would still be possible to accomplish a relinquishment of the Antarctic wilderness. For that reason the Antarctic must not be shared out. In order to hinder an international race for exploitation ravaging the virgin land, the Greenpeace protestors do not suffice. Most people must feel something for their

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heritage, and we can only defend the Antarctic when we grasp its beauty. The true worth of the still undisturbed continent to mankind is not measured in dollars. It is measured only by the quality of wilderness, which is naturally peaceful, endless and beautiful.67

The Antarctic wilderness, however, to Messner did not constitute a value in itself. Rather, he considered the cognitive and emotional aspects connected to it worth preserving. The “white infinity”68 that he found in the Antarctic—a world he at times perceived as “unreal, repelling mankind”69—to him was one of the last places on earth to allow for what he considered primary experiences with and within nature: This possibility of amassing experiences is a hundred thousand and more years old. Before there were art and science, man knew what lightning meant, without knowing that it concerned a discharge of electricity. This possibility of experience is lost to us. And this is one of the most essential reasons why something like the Antarctic must be preserved. If the Antarctic is developed, divided up, exploited, there is no more space where man can experience nature so directly.70

Further, the Antarctic was, he thought, “a land which stimulates dreams . . . even if man himself should never come there.”71 This also explains his idea of a world park: the Antarctic—even though it would remain out of touch for most people—was worth preserving because it constituted an imaginary retreat, a place for myths and fantasies. As Messner put it, “If we poison air and water, we die. If we cut off more and more of the wilderness, humans will also die—of mental degeneration.”72 The question whether he would not with his expedition contribute to a kind of polar tourism that stood in contrast to the ideals of a world park was one that he was frequently asked and seems at least difficult to answer.

An Exploration of the Self The aim, however, was to live through a journey and narrate the experiences on this journey for a broader public as a “technology of the self ”—an interaction of outer and inner landscape: “The longer I wandered across the snow desert, the more all horizons lost themselves. The free play of my fantasies became greater. Perhaps the wild natural landscape of the Antarctic was only important for humanity because it stimulated one to dreaming.”73 Through his narration, Messner attempted to give his readers an idea of what this experience of the self in the Antarctic landscape was like. The act of walk-

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ing was thus in writing transformed into a meditative activity: “Whilst moving my thoughts ran, too. The going would have been much more strenuous if I had not been able to dream and fantasize.”74 His thoughts, he experienced as “much more radical and at the same time more distinct than at home.”75 At the same time, the journey also allowed for the revival of old dreams, and in his fantasies, Messner said, he was often far away from the Antarctic. The Antarctic landscape, of course, contributed to this: “The gentle wind on the tent walls sounded like the music of Vangelis. The world here was still and yet full of tones.”76 Space and time were of less importance as categories in an “unimaginably immense snow surface,”77 and due to this, time to the travelers appeared to be standing still, like “a fixed recollection.”78 “The distant view in this snow landscape was not exciting, for all background was lacking and, if it had been there, it would have been swallowed up by this flickering grey that was neither mist nor clouds, but rather indicated a limit to this borderless stillness. The horizon melted away.”79 This feeling of radical exposure that the Antarctic landscape allowed for— Messner explained that there was “nothing, nothing, nothing, behind which you can hide”80—turned the Antarctic, as the title of his book suggests, into heaven and hell at the same time.81 While cruel in nature—or, simply, not made for humans—it allowed for unique experiences: “In the interior of the Antarctic the primitive state ruled. Heaven and hell were one here.”82 However, this exact nature was what Messner was looking for to style his march as a technology of the self, an exploration of the self. For this, the Antarctic constituted an ideal surrounding: “In the ice of the Antarctic these values, which the consumer society had driven out of their ‘paradise,’ were preserved: stillness, peacefulness, unoccupied space. These virtues were here, sealed and frozen in like the land.”83 He claimed that he needed “the ‘titillation’ in order to discover myself as a person.”84 The Antarctic landscape, with its lack of other stimuli, allowed for an intense self-experience.85 This took at times the form of highly structured thoughts, resulting in attempts to follow one single thought for as long as possible: “Generally, it was a single connected chain of thought which occupied me. From ‘morning’ to ‘evening.’ On starting, some memory or other out of my dreams nestled in my thoughts and haunted them all day.”86 At other times, however, it seems to be the opposite that constituted the Antarctic experience. In this latter situation, walking became a meditative act: “I could have gone a life long thus. Movement as a pastime; movement as the rhythm of thought; movement as meditation.”87 This was supported by the fact that Messner attested himself dromomania (“my travelling is compulsive”88), which also helped him through the physically and psychologically demanding parts of the expedition: “I could not imagine anything more beautiful than this movement. . . . The desire to march further was one of my motivations.”89 Messner

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described that walking “allowed you to think. Nothing could be more exciting than the continual moving over the ice. I discovered no new lands and yet each sastrugi, each cloud aroused my imagination. With the visible my memory combined an imaginary world in me.”90 This, Messner described as a loss or breakdown of borders. At times, he said, he no longer differentiated between dreams and thoughts,91 between self and nature: I was here, saw, heard, moved. From ethic and aesthetic I was more and more removed. The plain was always the same. I was neither scientist nor theologian, nor romantic, nevertheless I knew. The realizations went right through me, without me trying to formulate or analyse them. The experience of existing came to me. What we now did and perceived, reached us as world.92

Messner even felt that his march had re-established a connection between self and nature that had long ago been disconnected by technology: “These weeks of living with unadulterated nature gave me again that self-confidence which earlier, before mankind and his technology had ‘subjugated’ the world, had fulfilled each living, feeling creature.”93 This focus on the shaping of the self that is presented as the central purpose of the expedition becomes even more surprising when the historical context in which it took place is taken into account. When Messner and Fuchs embarked on their journey, the Iron Curtain fell—unquestionably an event of global significance. The explorers learned about these events on the first part of their march, being informed by Spiegel journalist Ulrich Jaeger. In the tense situation that they found themselves in—due to Fuchs’s sore feet they were not advancing quickly enough94—they did not realize the importance of the news: “The news of the opening of the Berlin Wall . . . , seemed to me as unimportant as the height of the mountains on the moon. Here there were fields of sastrugi, European politics only a memory. How far away all that was!”95 However, even in the stress-relieved surrounding of the Amundsen-Scott Research Station at the South Pole, the information from Europe seems to have appeared to Messner as insignificant or at least very distant. “What was happening at home at this time,” he admitted, “the fall of the Berlin Wall, the many Trabant cars in the west, the revolutions in eastern Europe—occupied us only peripherally.”96 Although they had the chance to read newspapers at the pole, the news from Europe appeared to be “from another planet”:97 “What we were doing was a life in itself, completely absorbing us but divorced from the world. What was taking place in East Germany sounded like a fairy-tale. Nevertheless, it was not our life.”98 In this context, Messner reaffirmed the expedition as a “technology of the self ”:

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The relevance of our expedition in such a politically turbulent time remained for us the same as at the start. No, our march was important only to us. And when I considered it objectively, it appeared to me now sometimes laughable how we exerted ourselves. What was to come out of East and West Germany was for us a purely theoretical question. That may sound cynical but it was so. For us the wind had significance, likewise our health, the harmony between us. We would find ourselves in this new political situation once the expedition was over.99

The technologies of the shaping of a self are not restricted to the person heror himself, but can, of course, also be applied by exterior forces. These forces, very broadly, often become visible by their function of disciplining and normalizing the self. In Messner’s case, one gets an impression of the struggles between person and outside world over the power to operate on the self. Messner mentioned three basic groups who raised criticism against his expedition:100 first, the ecologists who feared that his expedition might lead to an increase in Antarctic tourism; second, the “citizens, who were indirectly angry with themselves, when they saw one person living out his dreams to the ultimate”; and third, his neighbors. The last group, according to Messner, considered his endeavor irresponsible because it was opposed to common morality: “That I, despite my family commitments, for months escaped from day-to-day pressures, in order to follow my private ambitions, was for them not justifiable.”101 Messner himself acknowledged the pressure that was exercised. Risking one’s life for the sake of an exploration of the self did not fit well with the disciplinary forces of a society that held a “safe life” as a high ideal. Foucault in connection with this speaks of “a power to foster life,” a “technology . . . whose highest function was perhaps . . . to invest life through and through”—the “biopolitics of the population.”102 In modern society, according to Foucault, “it was the taking charge of life, more than the threat of death, that gave power its access even to the body.”103 Messner refused this disciplinary power the access to his body and thus envisioned himself as an ”agent provocateur”: I understood those desk-bound folk, who sat out their time at home or in an office, yet would rather have walked across the Antarctic with me. As they consciously experienced neither a budding self-criticism nor the summons to alter their lives, they had to react aggressively towards me. Not because I was a “superman,” rather because I provoked them by my actions. As time and again I placed my life in question, I called into question their lives also. Despite family, despite my forty-five years, despite that questionable fame which, in the middle-class mind, guaranteed me an existence, I was again once more ready to put my life on the line.104

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“When We Had Reached 90° South, We Had Also Abandoned the Ice Continent” On the first part of their journey, Messner described the South Pole as an “imaginary point”105 that was at the same time the first real goal of the march, which they reached after one and a half months of traveling. At first sight, it appeared to them as “an unreal world and yet fiercely longed for.”106 This impression was reinforced by the number of people present at the pole. Between all those people and their technological equipment, Messner said, he almost forgot where he was: “The South Pole was a complete contrast to the ice desert, instead of being its culmination.”107 This turned the arrival at the pole into an unreal experience for Messner: Today . . . you go 1,000 kilometres and more through the stillness, through an inestimable vastness and suddenly there stand domes, cubes and masts. What I saw at the Pole was futuristic. It appeared to me as an inversion of all forms and perceptions which belonged to this landscape.108

Instead, Messner had wished for “a black tent—pointed, tattered” at the South Pole, as a reminder of Amundsen’s arrival at the pole; the rest—and this included the Amundsen-Scott Research Station—he considered “a symbol of human megalomania.”109 Consequently, Messner felt he had left the Antarctic wilderness when reaching the South Pole: “We were living now in another world, in another time.”110 The research station appeared to him as the “high-tech centre of civilization.”111 This feeling of discomfort—Messner and Fuchs were not used to the warmth, noise, and hectic rush of the populated station—was enhanced by the fact that Messner and Fuchs reached the South Pole on New Year’s Eve; and although the official policy of the station did not allow them to be welcomed as guests,112 they stayed in what the Spiegel called a construction worker camp outside the actual station113 and were unofficially invited to the station’s party. They seem to have enjoyed the comforts of the station—taking a shower after almost two months of traveling, watching the news, drinking and dancing at the party—yet Messner soon felt uncomfortable: “Everything seemed to me unpleasant, useless, narrow and less beautiful than life in our tent.”114 It is therefore hardly surprising that Messner, after having trouble to fall asleep and remembering having seen a tent outside the station, decided to grab his sleeping bag and slept outside.115 However, Messner’s opinion went further than a simple feeling of discomfort in a crowded high-tech station after extended times of traveling alone with Fuchs. His idea of an uninhabited world park of Antarctic wilderness did not fit with his impressions at the pole. First, he felt that a research station at

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the South Pole that was constantly populated took away the mystery that was originally inherent to this place and that had, in his view, fired Amundsen’s imagination to go there. Second, Messner was concerned about the ecological damages that the Antarctic research stations in general caused. Although he acknowledged the scientific value of Antarctic research, he declared: At sixty research stations, the technical expenditure constantly increases. And with it also the stress on the environment. Many of these stations have at their disposal their own harbour, their own aircraft and helicopter landing sites. Along the coast, where the stations are, lie abandoned vehicles, ruined buildings, empty oil tanks—like paper cartons on a rubbish tip. In the dry, cold air of Antarctica nothing decays. The rubbish heaps grow constantly bigger.116

Although people were there only during the Antarctic summer, their presence could already be felt, as human activities endangered the sensitive balance of the Antarctic flora and fauna. Messner thus combined his self narrative with ecological discourses. Two years before he started his expedition, the sociologist Ulrich Beck had published a study in which he pointed to trends such as individualization but also combined them with problems such as environmental damage, the consequences of industrialization, and the risks connected to the use of incalculable technologies.117 This critique of (post)modern society and the increase of ecological movements echoed in Messner’s Antarctic narrative. At the sight of the Amundsen-Scott Research Station, Messner asked himself what the South Pole would be like without the station and came to the conclusion that “the fluttering flags and the plaque with the inscription ‘Geographical South Pole’ nearby do not make this point any more interesting.”118 Together with the environmental pollution that the station produced, Messner therefore could not but conclude that “the stations armoured with technology should be scrapped.”119

Conclusion Although at a first sight they appear to stand far outside the norm of a safe life, Messner’s expeditions can be interpreted as being part of a wider social phenomenon of the period of the 1970s to 1990s. Just as meditation and therapy served as techniques of working on the self, Messner conceptualized his expeditions as self practices. The structural difference between Messner’s endeavors and techniques such as yoga or meditation was that Messner sought for untouched natural surroundings to experience and work upon the balance of his body and mind. As radical attempts of self techniques, they are, therefore, nonetheless, a child of their time.

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Furthermore, they produced a specific mode of narrating the Antarctic at the end of the Cold War. While discourses about masculinity and conventions of how to write travel accounts at the turn of the century led to Antarctic narratives that stopped at the surface of the body, the interest in modifying the self that the period after the 1970s witnessed changed this perspective. Rather than the body, it was the perspective on the self that structured Messner’s Antarctic narrative and turned it into an exploration of the self. Apart from the meditative potential of this, the turn toward the self also had the advantage that it presented to Messner a new answer to the question of where to go and what to do after all of the blank spots were erased from the map: A world, which has become measurable and photographable in its smallest details by means of satellites, does not bare any dimension of “wilderness” in its original form anymore. We may hardly speak of wilderness on this earth anymore today. But there are still some of those white spots: They are within ourselves. And for these white spots, it is worth going out into regions that have not been made for human beings.120

Civilization and high-end technology did not fit into this concept, and thus Messner combined his narrative with the contemporary discourse of environmental protectors. The scientific stations established in the Antarctic in general, and the Amundsen-Scott Station situated at the geographical South Pole in particular, therefore appeared in his narration as completely out of place in the Antarctic landscape. In Messner’s logic, they only produced waste and took away the mystery from a place that he conceptualized as an arena for primary experiences for his self. By representing his self in the Antarctic landscape, Messner sought to create an image that should allow his readers to have a glimpse at the experiences that he made. On the one hand, the expedition was a remarkable act of resisting social technologies of disciplining and control: Messner’s expedition constituted a complete opposite to the idea of a safe life. On the other hand, however, Messner’s account can only function within the discourses of the established psychosciences. By articulating his doubts and worries, the processes that his thinking underwent, by explaining that his journey was the search for the self of someone who suffered from the need to be compulsively traveling, Messner tried to open his narration to psychological interpretations to make it readable for a wider public. In the broader context of the end of the Cold War, Messner’s expedition reflected the advent of new actors in the discourses concerning the Antarctic. For environmentalists, as for Messner, mechanized attempts at exploring or studying the polar landscape, which had dominated the Cold War era, seemed out of place and were questioned by concepts of wilderness that were supposed

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to protect nature and stimulate human fantasy at the same time. With Messner, the turn toward the self arrived at the South Pole and called into question the large-scale technological scientific projects that had characterized human activities in the Antarctic during the Cold War era. Pascal Schillings works at the University of Cologne’s History Department. He is interested in the history of science, especially of Antarctic exploration, during the nineteenth and centuries. He coedited the focus “Spaces—Objects— Knowledge” for the journal Historical Social Research. In 2016 he published his PhD Der letzte weiße Flecken. Europäische Antarktisreisen um 1900 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht).

Notes 1. Geoff Somers, “Review: Antarctica: Both Heaven and Hell by Reinhold Messner,” Geographical Journal 158, no. 3 (1992): 331. 2. Reinhold Messner, Antarctica: Both Heaven and Hell (Marlborough: Crowood Press, 1991), 31. 3. Klaus Dodds, “The Great Trek: New Zealand and the British/Commonwealth 1955– 58 Trans-Antarctic Expedition,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 33 (2005): 93. 4. “Polar Crossing Completed,” New York Times, 3 March 1958. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 55. 7. Ibid., 60. 8. Reinhold Messner, quoted in Wilhelm Bittorf and Ulrich Jaeger, “Der letzte Trip auf Erden II,” Der Spiegel, 25 December 1989, 145 (my translation). 9. Messner, Antarctica, 26. 10. Ibid., 169. 11. Ibid., 115. 12. Ibid., 210. 13. See Wilhelm Filchner, Zum sechsten Erdteil. Die zweite deutsche Südpolar-Expedition (Berlin: Ullstein, 1923). 14. See Ernest Shackleton, South: The Endurance Expedition, ed. F. Fleming (London: Penguin, 2002). 15. Messner, Antarctica, 32. 16. Arved Fuchs, quoted in Messner, Antarctica, 82. 17. Wilhelm Bittorf and Ulrich Jaeger, “Der letzte Trip auf Erden I,” Der Spiegel, 11 December 1989, 213. 18. See Beau Riffenburgh, Polar Exploration (London: Andre Deutsch, 2009), 213. 19. Messner, Antarctica, 228. 20. See Reinhold Messner, Reinhold Messner. Mein Weg. Bilanz eines Grenzgängers, ed. Ralf-Peter Märtin (Munich: Piper, 2006), 9. 21. Messner, Antarctica, 228. 22. Ibid., 263.

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23. Ibid. Messner had, by the way, read Scott’s diary in school. 24. See Roland Huntford, Scott and Amundsen: The Last Place on Earth (London: Abacus, 2009). 25. On the reception of Shackleton in the 1990s, see, for instance, Rebecca Farley, “By Endurance We Conquer: Ernest Shackleton and Performances of White Male Hegemony,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 8, no. 2 (June 2005). 26. Christopher E. Forth, Masculinity in the Modern West: Gender, Civilization and the Body (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 141. 27. See ibid., 141–68. 28. “Mr. Bernacchi on the Southern Cross Antarctic Expedition,” Geographical Journal 18, no. 5 (November 1901): 527. 29. Robert Falcon Scott, Journals: Captain Scott’s Last Expedition, ed. Max Jones (London: Oxford University Press, 2008), 361. 30. Ibid., 362. 31. See ibid., 366. 32. Ibid., 352. 33. Ibid., 383. 34. Kathryn Yusoff, “Antarctic Exposure: Archives of the Feeling Body,” Cultural Geographies 14, no. 2 (April 2007): 228. 35. See John Wylie, “Becoming-Icy: Scott and Amundsen’s South Polar Voyages, 1910– 13,” Cultural Geographies 9, no. 3 (July 2002). 36. Ibid., 213. 37. Ibid., 260. 38. See Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World (London: Vintage, 2010): 235–310. 39. Messner, Antarctica, 258. 40. Messner, Antarctica, 25. In German: “Sinnlosigkeit”; Reinhold Messner, Antarktis. Himmel und Hölle zugleich, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2004), 18. 41. Messner, Antarctica, 230. 42. Ibid., 233. 43. Ibid., 222. 44. Wilhelm Schmid, “Performance am Südpol. Versuch über Messners Form von Lebenskunst,” in Reinhold Messners Philosophie, ed. Volker Caysa and Wilhelm Schmid (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002), 120. 45. See, for instance, Anselm Doering-Manteuffel and Lutz Raphael, Nach dem Boom. Perspektiven auf die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970 (Göttingen: Vaandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 75; Andreas Rödder, “Moderne—Postmoderne—Zweite Moderne. Deutungskategorien für die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik in den siebziger und achtziger Jahren,” in Auf dem Weg in eine neue Moderne? Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in den siebziger und achtziger Jahren, ed. Thomas Raithel, Andreas Rödder, and Andreas Wirsching (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009), 184. 46. See Pascal Eitler, “Der ‘Neue Mann’ des ‘New Age.’ Emotion und Religion in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1970–1990,” in Die Präsenz der Gefühle. Männlichkeit und Emotion in der Moderne, ed. Manuel Borutta and Nina Verheyen (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2010). 47. See Sabine Maasen, “Das beratene Selbst. Zur Genealogie der Therapeutisierung in den ‘langen’ Siebzigern. Eine Perspektivierung,” in Das beratene Selbst. Zur Genealo-

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48. 49.

50.

51. 52.

53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

gie der Therapeutisierung in den ‘langen’ Siebzigern, ed. Sabine Maasen, Jens Elberfeld, Pascal Eitler, and Maik Tändler (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011), 8. See Eitler, “Der ‘Neue Mann,’” 285. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, “Introduction,” in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 3. Michel Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 19. Ibid., 18. See, for instance, Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, 2nd ed. (New York: Free Association Books, 1999). Nikolas Rose, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 2. Greg Eghigian, Andreas Killen, and Christine Leuenberger, “Introduction: The Self as Project; Politics and the Human Sciences in the Twentieth Century,” Osiris 22(2007): 2. Messner, Antarctica, 14. The German original of this quote ends: “Mir ging es beim Unterwegssein in der Wildnis nicht um die Welt draußen, sondern um die Welt in mir drin. Ich war der Eroberer meiner eigenen Seele”; Messner, Antarktis, 9. See Messner, Mein Weg, 173. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 14. See ibid., 12. See Messner, Antarctica, 37. Ibid., 34. Ibid., 217. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 199. Although environmental protectors accused Messner of directing touristic attention to Antarctica by his expedition; see Messner, Antarctica, 26. Ibid., 199. Ibid., 37. Ibid., 221. Ibid., 152. Ibid., 129. At another point, Messner explained that “these weeks of living with unadulterated nature gave me again that self-confidence which earlier, before mankind and his technology had ‘subjugated’ the world, had fulfilled each living, feeling creature. It seemed to me as if I were restored to that time and that state when nature alone was ‘God’”; Messner, Antarctica, 217. Ibid., 167. Reinhold Messner, quoted in Wilhelm Bittorf and Ulrich Jaeger, “Der letzte Trip auf Erden IV,” Der Spiegel, 22 January 1990, 199. Messner, Antarctica, 167. Ibid., 115. Ibid., 116. Ibid., 217.

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77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

93. 94.

95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112.

Ibid., 105. Ibid., 216. Ibid., 224. Ibid. Ibid., 32. Ibid., 129. Ibid., 167. Ibid., 15. See ibid., 130. Ibid., 168. In the German version, Messner added to this: “Dieses konzentrierte Denken gab mir ein deutliches Gefühl von Bei-mir-Sein”; Messner, Antarktis, 163. Messner, Antarctica, 142. In the German version, walking is—more than a pastime—a “Erfüllung der Zeit”; Messner, Antarktis, 104. Messner, Antarctica, 132. Ibid., 223. Ibid., 161. Ibid., 145. Ibid., 130. The end of the German version reads: “Mir reichte das Erlebnis des DaSeins. Es gab keine Welt über das hinaus, was wir jetzt taten und empfanden”; Messner, Antarktis, 90. Messner, Antarctica, 217. On time pressure, see also “Letzter Trip auf Erden,” Der Spiegel, 20 November 1989, 295; on physical hardships, see, for instance, Bittorf and Jaeger, “Der letzte Trip auf Erden I,” 213. Messner, Antarctica, 156. Ibid., 222. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Of course, there was more criticism, especially in the media. Messner was, for instance, accused of yearning for media attention; see ibid., 127. Ibid., 26. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (London: Vintage, 1990), 138. Ibid., 143. Messner, Antarctic, 46. Ibid., 160; title quote, ibid., 185. Ibid., 178. Ibid. Ibid., 180. Ibid. Ibid., 184. Ibid., 198. “Although we did not bother ourselves about the official policy of Washington’s National Science Foundation, we could not get round it. According to their regulations, we would not once have been allowed to use the shower. For the NSF in Washington

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113. 114. 115. 116.

117. 118. 119. 120.

only officially promoted undertakings of the signatory nations to the Antarctic Treaty who were allowed to exist on the ice continents [sic],” ibid., 202. Wilhelm Bittorf and Ulrich Jaeger, “Der letzte Trip auf Erden III,” Der Spiegel, 8 January 1990, 166. Messner, Antarctica, 200. See ibid., 201. Ibid., 199. The Spiegel drew a dramatic image: “The Antarctic coastline is littered with scrapped tractors, wrecked barracks, and discarded oil tankers. Sewerage water and slurry run into the sea and poison the coastal waters. Piles of rubbish burn openly and pollute the air. Constantly rattling helicopters destroy the fauna, and new airstrips are driven through penguin colonies by the brutal force of dynamite and bulldozers”; Bittorf and Jaeger, “Der letzte Trip auf Erden IV,” 198. See Ulrich Beck, Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986). Messner, Antarctica, 198. Ibid., 197. Messner, Mein Weg, 11.

Bibliography Beck, Ulrich. Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986. Bittorf, Wilhelm, and Ulrich Jaeger. “Der letzte Trip auf Erden I.” Der Spiegel, 11 December 1989. ———. “Der letzte Trip auf Erden II.” Der Spiegel, 25 December 1989. ———. “Der letzte Trip auf Erden III.” Der Spiegel, 8 January 1990. ———. “Der letzte Trip auf Erden IV.” Der Spiegel, 22 January 1990. Cherry-Garrard, Apsley. The Worst Journey in the World. London: Vintage, 2010. Dodds, Klaus. “The Great Trek: New Zealand and the British/Commonwealth 1955–58 Trans-Antarctic Expedition.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 33 (2005): 93–114. Doering-Manteuffel, Anselm, and Lutz Raphael. Nach dem Boom. Perspektiven auf die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008. Eghigian, Greg, Andreas Killen, and Christine Leuenberger. “Introduction: The Self as Project; Politics and the Human Sciences in the Twentieth Century.” Osiris 22 (2007): 1–25. Eitler, Pascal. “Der ‘Neue Mann’ des ‘New Age.’ Emotion und Religion in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1970–1990.” In Die Präsenz der Gefühle. Männlichkeit und Emotion in der Moderne, edited by Manuel Borutta and Nina Verheyen, 279–304. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2010. Farley, Rebecca. “By Endurance We Conquer. Ernest Shackleton and Performances of White Male Hegemony.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 8, no. 2 (June 2005): 231–54. Filchner, Wilhelm. Zum sechsten Erdteil. Die zweite deutsche Südpolar-Expedition. Berlin: Ullstein, 1923. Forth, Christopher E. Masculinity in the Modern West: Gender, Civilization and the Body. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

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Foucault, Michel. “Technologies of the Self.” In Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, edited by L. Martin, H. Gutman and P. Hutton, 16–49. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. ———. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. London: Vintage, 1990. Huntford, Roland. Scott and Amundsen: The Last Place on Earth. London: Abacus, 2009. “Letzter Trip auf Erden.” Der Spiegel, 20 November 1989. Maasen, Sabine. “Das beratene Selbst. Zur Genealogie der Therapeutisierung in den ‘langen’ Siebzigern. Eine Perspektivierung.” In Das beratene Selbst. Zur Genealogie der Therapeutisierung in den “langen” Siebzigern, edited by Sabine Maasen, Jens Elberfeld, Pascal Eitler, and Maik Tändler, 7–34. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011. Martin, Luther H., Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton. “Introduction.” In Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, edited by L. Martin, H. Gutman and P. Hutton, 3–9. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. Messner, Reinhold. Antarctica: Both Heaven and Hell. Marlborough: Crowood Press, 1991. ———. Antarktis. Himmel und Hölle zugleich. 2nd edition. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2004. ———. Reinhold Messner. Mein Weg. Bilanz eines Grenzgängers. Edited by R. P. Märtin. Munich: Piper, 2006. “Mr. Bernacchi on the Southern Cross Antarctic Expedition.” Geographical Journal 18, no. 5 (November 1901): 527. “Polar Crossing Completed.” The New York Times, 3 March 1958. Riffenburgh, Beau. Polar Exploration. London: Andre Deutsch, 2009. Rödder, Andreas. “Moderne—Postmoderne—Zweite Moderne. Deutungskategorien für die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik in den siebziger und achtziger Jahren.” In Auf dem Weg in eine neue Moderne? Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in den siebziger und achtziger Jahren, edited by Thomas Raithel, Andreas Rödder, and Andreas Wirsching, 181–201. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009. Rose, Nikolas. Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ———. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self 2nd edition. New York: Free Association Books, 1999. Schmid, Wilhelm. “Performance am Südpol. Versuch über Messners Form von Lebenskunst.” In Reinhold Messners Philosophie, edited by Volker Caysa and Wilhelm Schmid, 120–60. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002. Scott, Robert Falcon. Journals: Captain Scott’s Last Expedition. Edited by M. Jones. London: Oxford University Press, 2008. Shackleton, Ernest. South: The Endurance Expedition. Edited by F. Fleming. London: Penguin, 2002. Somers, Geoff. “Review: Antarctica: Both Heaven and Hell by Reinhold Messner.” Geographical Journal 158, no. 3 (November 1992): 331. Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Wylie, John. “Becoming-Icy: Scott and Amundsen’s South Polar Voyages, 1910–13.” Cultural Geographies 9, no. 3 (July 2002): 249–65. Yusoff, Kathryn. “Antarctic Exposure: Archives of the Feeling Body.” Cultural Geographies 14, no. 2 (April 2007): 211–33.

/ Conclusion Histories of Extreme Environments beyond the Cold War Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

I

t was not the ice of Greenland, the cold temperatures of Verkhoyansk, or the snow of Alaska that made the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II a Cold War. The conflict acquired the adjective “cold” from the nuclear bomb that created the stalemate between the superpowers and forced them to refrain from escalating it into active warfare. The nuclear bomb was the specter that reappeared whenever the conflict threatened to shift from a “cold” war to a “hot” one.1 Many studies have illuminated the geopolitics and power politics of the Cold War, which overshadows countless other conflicts in both its scale and its duration. The confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union divided the world into two spheres with radically different ideologies and views of the world. In these studies, the attribute “cold” is nothing more than a temperature metaphor used to describe a fragile peace in the shadow of the nuclear bomb. This volume does not limit itself to the usual metaphorical meaning of the Cold War—a designation that was used almost exclusively by countries in the West and was virtually unknown in the Soviet Union.2 Rather, the contributions show that it is worthwhile to focus on cold, ice, and snow and how they were talked about and dealt with. In order to understand how the war played out far from the political centers, on the peripheries of the East and West “blocs,” it is necessary to look at the extreme environments that became sites of Cold War encounters and engagements. In certain respects, they reveal more about the complex entanglements of science, politics, culture, and everyday life than studies dedicated to the numerous political crises that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The polar regions and scientific institutions for the study of ice, frost, and snow were no less important arenas in which the superpowers confronted one another or entered into cooperations and created national, imperial, and global sites of memory. As this volume shows, the occupation of new spaces that served as proving grounds and the altered

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attitudes toward nature and the environment that resulted from this were important characteristics of the Cold War. The examination of extremely cold regions of the world also reveals that freezing temperatures, ice, and snow are not just natural categories, but also have a history of their own that is symptomatic not just for the Cold War era, but also for problem areas we face today.

Proving Grounds for Technology and the “New Man” By the late nineteenth century, the polar regions and other areas with extreme climate conditions had become spaces in which individuals and states could prove themselves and measure themselves against one another. Prior to World War II there had already been races to reach the North and South Poles that inspired young people to dream of becoming polar explorers. Adventure novels and travelogues enjoyed great popularity, and in its accounts of the polar expeditions the media transmitted ideals about nation and empire, masculinity, self-sacrifice, and idealism.3 Travelers such as the British polar explorer Ernest Shackleton were revered as heroes. In the 1930s, both young people and adults eagerly followed the progress of the expeditions of the American Richard Evelyn Byrd to the North and South Poles. These journeys were a display of humanity’s power over nature, which could be overcome with the help of modern technology; the purposeful use of film technology meant that they became a media spectacle as well. In the Soviet Union visitors flocked to museums such as the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic, opened in 1937 in Leningrad, which told compelling tales of comradeship, courage, and endurance in the face of hardship. In the 1930s, it was still possible to prove one’s heroism and manliness by venturing into cold regions, but after the start of the Cold War the dangers of extreme environments were increasingly scoffed at. Those who lived in cold regions outdid each other in equanimity and “coolness.” In the Russian Empire before the October Revolution in 1917, for example, the revolutionaries, anarchists, and communists whom the tsar and his officials had banned to the cold periphery of the empire had complained about the cold, darkness, and exile from civilization. Yet at the start of the Cold War even the coldest regions of the world were presented as being of moderate temperature. Strength, modernity, and even superiority over indigenous peoples could be enacted through the show of disdain for the iciness of this living environment. The International Polar Year (1957) was considered a high point of global science in the midst of the Cold War, as an opportunity for the hostile blocs to reach out across their borders and work together in the name of science. This narrative draws on an older vision, prevalent in the nineteenth century through the 1920s and 1930s, of humans mastering nature by means of science

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and technology. In that year, for example, a crowd of international journalists was given a tour of the kolkhoz settlement Oymyakon in Yakutia, where they met people who were ostensibly no longer impressed by the cold temperatures there—even though the unassuming settlement was challenging other sites for the title of the coldest place in the world: “Is it difficult to carry on your life at sixty to seventy degrees below zero?” we [the international journalists] asked. The Yakut repeated the question, which evoked laughter among those present. She seemed to have expected the question. “The cold is easy to endure when you live in good houses,” responded the chairwoman [of the rural council] simply. “Today nobody lives in tents anymore, not even the Evenki, who were treated worse than dogs under tsarist rule. We have schools and a house of culture, a theater, a cinema that is open every evening except Thursdays, a kindergarten, an ambulatory clinic, a bank, a post and telegraph office, and the many other facilities that a modern person requires.”4

Science and technology thus not only had the function of investigating the cold, but also epistemically and imaginatively domesticating these extreme environments and stripping the threat of its terror. The United States and the Soviet Union outdid each other in their attempts to downplay the implications and dangers of extreme environments in media coverage, books, and films. As this volume shows, the belief that it was possible not only to understand nature, but also to use the knowledge acquired systematically and on a grand scale to subdue nature, had taken root in the Soviet Union, the United States, and even countries like Switzerland. Utopias of a new and better engineered world were envisioned in and by means of these extreme environments. Science, technology, knowledge, and expertise enabled the distinct and most commonplace features of Soviet and American everyday life to be brought even to the most inhospitable environments in the world—from polar stations in Antarctica, to drifting ice floes in the Northwest Passage, to Camp Century dug into the ice of Greenland. The cold zones of the world, followed not long after by the oceans and outer space, became not only laboratories of science, but also workshops in which the “new” man was made, who stood defiantly against the rhythms and might of nature. Extreme environments also serve as a testing ground for new technology. The development of so-called frontier technologies opens up new realms of possibility and utopian visions of technological control of uninhabitable environments, as David Mindell has recently shown in relation to current developments in automation and robotics: “Extreme environments press the relationships between people and machines to their limits. They have long

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been sites of innovation. Here engineers have the freest hand to experiment.”5 From the perspective of environmental history and the history of technology, it is worthwhile to focus more closely on this interplay between technology and the environment—not, however, simply the role of engineers or technological innovation in a narrow sense. For aircraft, rockets, spaceships, and polar stations have an ideological and symbolic function that must be decoded historically if we want to understand the meanings of ice and snow and how they are connected with the central narratives of the Cold War. The history of extreme environments and control over them is simultaneously the history of cutting-edge technology and the fantasies of power and conquest that went with it.

New Frontiers and the “New Man” The desire to overcome the limits and demands of nature was prevalent in both the East and the West. The narrative of the “perceived” temperature in extreme environments underwent changes, but so too did the equipment and technologies. Humans were meant to adapt better and better to these extreme environments. Both physical and psychological strength and courage were put to the test through experiments in cold conditions in the lab and in polar regions, which was also seen as providing a strategic advantage in the space race.6 Whoever was better adapted to extreme temperatures—and here we see the continuing influence of Lamarckian ideas in the twentieth century—could also emerge victorious in the space race or in the exploration of the ocean’s depths. On both sides of the Iron Curtain notions developed that went far beyond human adaptation and assimilation. East and West shared the belief that it was possible to improve weather and the climate to benefit humans and enable the cultivation of crops even in climatically unfavorable regions. This was not new. Since antiquity there have been ideas about how modifying the landscape through de- or reforestation or land amelioration could improve an area’s microclimate and overcome the negative effects of cold or wet or dry spells on agriculture. In the early phase of the Cold War, the scale of these Promethean visions underwent particularly significant changes. In the competition to imagine the scope of human possibility, concrete plans were developed for altering the climate. In pre-revolutionary Russia, meteorologists had merely dreamed of transforming the steppe regions in the south into fertile land, but the Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature of 1948 turned its gaze to far larger and more ambitious goals. Although the Stalin Plan was abandoned a few years later, it was not the last utopian plan for transforming nature and the climate. In the 1950s, the Davydov Plan called for redirecting the rivers of northern Russia and Siberia to water cotton plantations in Central Asia.7

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Finally, the Borisov Plan in the 1960s envisaged regulating the global climate by constructing a dam across the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia. The Arctic Ocean would be shielded from the cold water of the northern Atlantic, while warm water would be directed to the northern Pacific in order to melt the Arctic ice. US scientists under President Nixon also began to conduct their own investigations, and at a summit in Vladivostok in 1974, the US president Gerald Ford and the Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev discussed the possibility of implementing this plan. Rather than aiming to improve the climate of a region or an individual country, this plan was meant to make changes on a planetary scale.8 Another proposal was equally ambitious: to create an artificial planetary ring around the earth using 2.4 million tonnes of dust particles. These were to be put into orbit at an altitude of one thousand kilometers and distributed along the North-South axis, where they would act like reflectors and bring warmth and light into the polar regions and improve the overall distribution of heat across the planet.9 The sense of necessity that motivated the development of these plans was intensified by the arms race between the superpowers. At the same time, it is also possible to identify countertendencies to such power political plans—namely, the depoliticization of natural areas and withdrawal from national or bloc interests. Treaties regarding the Antarctic and outer space were only part of a larger process of revisiting the medieval concept of the commons in the context of global politics. In the 1960s and 1970s, the oceans, the Arctic and Antarctic, the atmosphere, and outer space became de jure part of the global commons, the shared birthright of all humanity that may not be used by any individual state for military or political ends. This concern corresponded with the doomsday scenarios of the Cold War, for the fear of the use of nuclear weapons strengthened the concerns about a cooling climate that were shared by people on both sides of the Iron Curtain in the second half of the twentieth century.10 The glorification of cold was replaced in the 1970s by fears of a global cooling.11 Instead of celebrating demonstrations of courage and manly prowess in the confrontation of the cold, fiction, art, films, and popular science fed anxiety about a new ice age. The nightmare vision of a “nuclear winter” bound together this fear with the fear of a nuclear first strike.12 The worry about global cooling was accompanied by an increasing environmental awareness, evoked in part by the ecological problems of the former “white” spots on the map. People became more sensitive to the fragility of nature and the vulnerability of humanity. Pollution of the air and environment, militarization and fear of war, inadequate infrastructure and lack of perspectives for the future caused ordinary people as well as scientists and specialists on both sides of the Iron Curtain to ask about the limits to growth. In this way, the fantasies of having unlimited power over nature and modifying the climate

314 Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

according to human will were curbed. The ecological problems showed that prosperity and progress could not be achieved without a price. As this volume shows, the history of the environmental movement cannot be understood without considering the Cold War and the ways that its ideology of growth and rivalry with the environment destroyed the conditions on which human life is based.13

Costs of Cold In addition to the ecological implications of extreme environments, the economic aspects of expansion into these regions also preoccupied city planners, economists, and politicians from the 1970s onward.14 These discussions gained new impetus after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. In assessments of the victors and losers of the Cold War, the “costs of cold” have also been evaluated.15 Political scientists, economists, and historians have graded the Soviet Union poorly and concluded that it was this very expansion into cold, inhospitable spaces far from the center that led to the downfall of the Soviet Union and its departure from the Cold War stage as the loser in the conflict. During the Cold War, Russia in particular expanded into “poorly thermal spaces,” as Fiona Hills and Clifford G. Gaddy described it in 2003, and this was ultimately the death knell for the Soviet economy. “Russia needs to shrink” if it is going to become economically productive again, they suggested.16 The glorification of the cold that had played such an important role in Russia’s defeat of Napoleon and Hitler, this thesis suggests, had worn out beyond repair.17 Despite the opposite assessment of cold, this argument recalls the climate deterministic positions of the early twentieth century, in which civilization, progress, and efficiency were connected with cooler temperatures.18 Yet in spite of these diagnoses, which are also due in part to the great economic crisis in the 1990s, certain rationalities of the Cold War continue to persist today. While the Arctic regions played only a minor role under Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, under Vladimir Putin and Dmitrii Medvedev their importance underwent a major shift. The earmarking of natural resource reserves in case of melting polar ice caps in the future had a tremendous impact on global politics. Subsequently, the Arctic and expansion into extreme environments came to be a key way of asserting and strengthening one’s own position.19 Here, however, the differences between the political heritage and the symbolism of cold regions becomes evident: the Antarctic stands for the cooperative legacy of the Cold War, thanks to the Antarctic Treaty dating to that era. But the Arctic continues to be a contested space to which Russia, the United States, Canada, Norway, and Denmark all lay claim. It is used to assert

Histories of Extreme Environments beyond the Cold War 315

strength and primacy and is connected with the promise of valuable natural resources.20 Today, cold and the staging of human life at its limits in extreme environments is used to promote collective identities and distinguish oneself from other nations. The study of frost, ice, and snow in the Cold War, which was not limited to just the United States and the Soviet Union, can illuminate the reasons for the endurance of these questions and narratives into the present. It reveals that the Cold War was “cold” not only in a metaphorical sense, but also with respect to its material contexts and experienced realities: it was a war that also played out in the interactions of humans and technology with extremely cold environments.

Notes 1. Matthew Grant and Benjamin Ziemann, “Introduction: The Cold War as an Imaginary War,” in Understanding the Imaginary War: Culture, Thought and Nuclear Conflict, 1945–90, ed. Matthew Grant and Benjamin Ziemann (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016). 2. Stefan Wiederkehr, “Die Verwendung des Terminus ‘Kalter Krieg’ in der Sowjetunion und Russland: Ein Indikator für den historischen Wandel der marxistisch-leninistische Ideologie und ihre Überwindung,” Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte 7, no. 1 (2003): 77. 3. Beau Riffenburg, The Myth of the Explorer: The Press, Sensationalism, and Geographical Discovery (London: Belhaven Press, 1993). 4. Karl Staf, Flug zum Kältepol: Illustrierte Reportage aus Jakutien (Moskau: Verlag für fremdsprachige Literatur, 1958), 59 5. David A. Mindell, Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy (New York: Viking, 2015), 5–6. 6. Jordan Bimm and Patrick Kilian, “The Well-Tempered Astronaut,” in Der kalte Krieg. Kältegrade eines globalen Konflikts, ed. Silvia Berger Ziauddin, David Eugster, and Christa Wirth (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2017). 7. Werner Leimbach, “Der Dawydow-Plan der Sowjetunion,” Zeitschrift für Raumforschung 1, no. 2 (1950); M. Dawydov, “Flüsse werden rückwärts fließen,” Die Presse der Sowjetunion, no. 83 (1956): 1913–14. 8. E. N. Kuzovkova, “Tol’ko fakty,” in Socializm i priroda. Sbornik statej (Moskva: Znanie, 1976), 41–42, 46; Wolfgang Behringer, Kulturgeschichte des Klimas: Von der Eiszeit bis zur globalen Erwärmung (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2007), 134, 251. 9. Boris Belge and Klaus Gestwa, “Wetterkrieg und Klimawandel: Die Meteorologie im Kalten Krieg,” Osteuropa 59, no. 10 (2009): 32; James R. Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 134. 10. Isabella Löhr and Andrea Rehling, eds., Global Commons im 20. Jahrhundert. Entwürfe für eine globale Welt (Munich: De Gruyter, 2014); Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243–48. 11. Fleming, Historical Perspectives, 131–34. 12. Eva Horn, Zukunft als Katastrophe (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2014).

316 Julia Herzberg, Christian Kehrt, and Franziska Torma

13. Jacob D. Hamblin, Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Adam Rome, The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013); Charles E. Ziegler, “Environmental Protection in Soviet–East European Relations,” in To Breathe Free. Eastern Europe’s Environmental Crisis, ed. Joan DeBardeleben (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1991); Frank Zelko, Make It a Green Peace! The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 14. Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 72. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 5. 17. Ibid., 40–41. 18. Ellsworth Huntington, Civilization and Climate (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1924); Seabury Colum GilFillan, “The Coldward Course of Progress,” Political Science Quarterly 35, no. 1 (1920). 19. Paul R. Josephson, The Conquest of the Russian Arctic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 10; Marlène Laruelle, Russia’s Arctic Strategies and the Future of the Far North (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2014); Marlène Laruelle, “Russia’s Arctic Ambitions: Transforming the ‘Cost of Cold,’” Institute for Security & Development Policy, published 9 June 2009, http://isdp.eu/content/uploads/publications/2009_lau relle_russias-arctic-ambitions.pdf. 20. Josephson, Conquest of the Russian Arctic, 340.

Bibliography Behringer, Wolfgang. Kulturgeschichte des Klimas: Von der Eiszeit bis zur globalen Erwärmung. München: C. H. Beck, 2007. Belge, Boris, and Klaus Gestwa. “Wetterkrieg und Klimawandel: Die Meteorologie im Kalten Krieg.” Osteuropa 59, no. 10 (2009): 15–42. Bimm, Jordan, and Patrick Kilian. “The Well-Tempered Astronaut.” In Der kalte Krieg: Kältegrade eines globalen Konflikts, edited by Silvia Berger Ziauddin, David Eugster, and Christa Wirth, 85–107. Zürich: Diaphanes, 2017. Dawydov, M. “Flüsse werden rückwärts fließen.” Die Presse der Sowjetunion, no. 83 (1956): 1913–14. Fleming, James R. Historical Perspectives on Climate Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Grant, Matthew, and Benjamin Ziemann. “Introduction: The Cold War as an Imaginary War.” In Understanding the Imaginary War: Culture, Thought and Nuclear Conflict, 1945–90, edited by Matthew Grant and Benjamin Ziemann, 1–29. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016. GilFillan, Seabury Colum. “The Coldward Course of Progress.” Political Science Quarterly 35, no. 1 (1920): 393–410. Hamblin, Jacob D. Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Hardin, Garrett. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (1968): 1243–48.

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Hill, Fiona, and Clifford G. Gaddy, The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out In the Cold. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. Horn, Eva. Zukunft als Katastrophe. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2014. Huntington, Ellsworth. Civilization and Climate. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1924. Josephson, Paul R. The Conquest of the Russian Arctic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Kuzovkova, E. N. “Tol’ko fakty.” In Socializm i priroda. Sbornik statej, 38–47. Moskva: Znanie, 1976. Laruelle, Marlène. “Russia’s Arctic Ambitions: Transforming the ‘Cost of Cold.’” Institute for Security & Development Policy, published 9 June 2009. http://isdp.eu/content/up loads/publications/2009_laurelle_russias-arctic-ambitions.pdf. Laruelle, Marlène. Russia’s Arctic Strategies and the Future of the Far North. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2014. Leimbach, Werner. “Der Dawydow-Plan der Sowjetunion.” Zeitschrift für Raumforschung 1, no. 2 (1950): 57–61. Löhr, Isabella, and Andrea Rehling, eds. Global Commons im 20. Jahrhundert: Entwürfe für eine globale Welt. Munich: De Gruyter, 2014. Mindell, David A. Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy. New York: Viking, 2015. Riffenburgh, Beau. The Myth of the Explorer: The Press, Sensationalism, and Geographical Discovery. London: Belhaven Press, 1993. Rome, Adam. The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation. New York: Hill and Wang, 2013. Staf, Karl. Flug zum Kältepol: Illustrierte Reportage aus Jakutien. Moskau: Verlag für fremdsprachige Literatur, 1958. Wiederkehr, Stefan. “Die Verwendung des Terminus ‘Kalter Krieg’ in der Sowjetunion und Russland: Ein Indikator für den historischen Wandel der marxistisch-leninistische Ideologie und ihre Überwindung.” Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte 7, no. 1 (2003): 53–83. Ziegler, Charles E. “Environmental Protection in Soviet–East European Relations.” In To Breathe Free: Eastern Europe’s Environmental Crisis, edited by Joan DeBardeleben, 83–100. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1991. Zelko, Frank. Make It a Green Peace! The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

/ Index Abominable Snowman, 10, 236-52. See also yeti Adventure Network International, 286 African nationalism, 174–75 Ahlmann, Hans W., 5, 30–34, 71, 74–75 Air Corps Ferrying Command, 91 Alaska, 30–31, 69–70, 74, 76, 71n10, 89, 120, 225–26, 309, 313 Alma-Ata (Almaty), 189–202 Alps, 5–7, 6n25, 9, 49–53, 53n16, 55, 57– 59, 74, 127, 189, 193, 195–96, 193n22, 200–202, 201n63, 214, 238 Antarctic analogy, 211, 211n4, 220, 224 Treaty, 9, 12, 140, 146–154, 175, 211, 211n2, 212n9, 221, 300n9, 314 Antarctica, 3, 5, 8–12, 23, 33, 75n41, 78, 89, 103–105, 139–155, 140n6, 163–178, 163n1, 168n23, 175n79, 211–35, 285– 308, 310–11, 313–14 Anthropocene, 21, 31, 34–35 Arctic, 4–7, 10, 12, 22, 24, 25–33, 35, 50, 52, 60, 69–76, 71n14, 75n38, 75n41, 78, 90, 93, 100–101, 109–35, 167, 178, 212–23, 212n12, 218n34, 225n60, 254, 257–58, 260, 263, 266, 289, 310, 313–14 Institute of North America, 69, 72 sea ice minimum (2007), 25 Army’s Polar Research and Development Center, 95 avalanche, 6–7, 9, 11, 22, 22n14, 49–68, 79, 189–208, 240, 267, 267n88 avalanche barriers, 50, 52 Bader, Henri, 7–8, 49, 54–55, 59–60, 50n2, 69, 74–75, 77–79, 74n30 bathyscaphe, 94

Beaudry, Emil, 70–71 Beccaria, Giorgio Costanzo, 173, 174n71 Benson, Carl S., 72, 76 Bluie East Two, 110, 111, 114–21, 126 West Eight, 91, 91n8 West One, 91, 91n8 boot packing, 197–98, 202 Bouvet de Lozier, Jean-Baptiste Charles, 165 Bouvetøya (Bouvet Island), 5, 9, 163–188 boy scouts, 94 British Colonial Office, 166 Foreign Office, 167, 170, 172 Burkhanov, Vasiliy, 172 Bush, Vannevar, 73 Camp Century, 8, 76, 78, 89–108, 165, 311 Tuto, 99, 121n57 Canada, 24, 30, 69–71, 71n14, 74, 76, 93, 111, 120, 225, 225n57, 314 Cape Circoncision, 164, 171 carbon dioxide, 21, 29–30 cartography, 196, 221 Central Asia, 9, 13, 189–191, 196–198, 201, 237–38, 244, 267n88, 312 Chapman, Sydney, 141, 169 Chimbulak ski resort, 192–195, 193n17, 202 Christensen, Lars, 166, 166n10, 169, 176 Church, James Edward, 51, 55 City under the Ice, 94, 96, 99 Clark, Elmer F., 78 climate change, 4, 23–26, 28–29, 31–32, 34–35, 104n53, 109, 127

Index 319

control, 23 indicators, 27, 28 models, 26 Coaz, Johan Wilhelm Fortunat, 50–51, 53 coldness, 4, 253–284 commodification, 188 Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1957–58), 287 Communism, 174, 191, 244, 254, 264 continental security, 70–71, 71n14 Crawford, Allan, 173–176 cryolite, 89–90 cryosphere, 21–24, 28, 28n39 cryptozoology, 243. See also pseudoscience; yeti CSAGI, 171–72 culture contact, 6, 90, 97, 109, 111, 113, 115, 121 da Cunha, Tristan, 168, 170 dams, 191, 193–194, 197, 202n68, 313 Dash, Mike, 177 decentralization, 196–97 Der Spiegel, 286, 289, 298, 300 de Saussure, Horace-Bénédict, 214–15, 225 Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, 71, 92, 110–11, 114, 120–22, 125–26, 225, 225n57 du Toit, A. L., 167 earth systems science, 191, 191n8 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 142–45, 143n16, 148, 150 Eismitte, 24, 52, 79, 98, 104 environmental change, 35, 71–2, 75, 109, 225 environmental humanities, 21, 31, 35 eventization, 26 exploration, 6–12, 51–52, 90, 145, 151, 153–54, 167, 173, 190, 220–23, 238, 240– 41, 254–55, 285–90, 292, 294, 296–97, 299, 302–303, 312 Explorer 1, 141–42 Explorer 3, 141 explosives, 177, 191, 197–201, 199n49

Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS), 168, 170 Far North, 11, 120, 253, 255–7, 259–265, 263n56, 267 bonuses, 256, 259–264, 267 Filchner, Wilhelm, 286, 288 Flint, Richard F., 72 Fristrup, Børge, 73 Fuchs, Vivian, 170, 287 Geographical Journal, 285, 290 geophysical sciences, 69, 72, 78, 211 geopolitics, 9, 12, 34, 69–70, 139–41, 146, 149, 151, 154, 165, 167, 174, 213, 221, 224, 226, 238, 309 Georg-von-Neumayer Station, 103–104 Giæve, John, 168 Gilruth, Robert, 218 glaciology, 4, 6–7, 10, 22–23, 31, 33, 35, 69–88, 191, 197 Global South, 190 Goldthwait, Richard P., 73 Gough Island, 168, 171, 171n51, 175 Great Acceleration, 20–21, 35 Greenland, 4–6, 8, 11–12, 24, 26, 31, 33, 49, 52, 55, 69–71, 71n14, 73, 76–79, 89–108, 109–35, 165, 220, 225, 225n57, 309, 311 Patrol, 91 Greenpeace, 11, 287, 295 Halley Bay, 217 Hansen, H. C., letter of 1957, 102 Heiberg, Gustav, 169 Heroic Age, 286, 288–92 historiography, 25, 31, 35, 237 Hofmeyr, W. L., 172 hostile environments, 3, 7–8, 31, 79, 92, 100, 190, 201, 213, 253–54, 267 human climate forcing, 28–29, 32 ice cap, 9, 24, 26, 28–29, 28n39, 31, 33, 55, 77–78, 93–104, 104n53, 110, 121–22, 125–26, 190, 287, 314 cores, 10, 24, 76–78, 98, 217 -free Arctic Ocean, 25–28, 31

320 Index

Ice Age, 9, 23, 29–30, 34, 109, 313 melt, 70–71, 97 sheet construction, 77 sea ice, 24–27, 28n39 30–31, 34, 109 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 7, 93 International Commission of Snow, 54–55, 59 international cooperation, 7, 54, 59, 169, 217, 245 International Court of Justice at The Hague, 166 International Geophysical Year (IGY), 7–8, 78, 139–44, 142 n16, 146–49, 154, 165, 169–71, 169n37, 211, 221, 223, 226 International Ice Patrol (IIP), 90–91 International Polar Year, 2007—2009, 24 International Polar Year, Second, 167 Inuit, 6, 24, 31, 89–90, 97, 109–111, 110n12, 113, 115–16, 120, 120n54, 123n68, 125–26 Ivigtut, 89–91

local knowledge, 4, 12, 23, 110, 126

Joint Research and Development Board, 71 Jones, Guy Carleton, 167

Nakaya, Ukichiro, 77 NASA, 94, 218, 218n38, 221, 223–25 National Security Council, NSC 5520, 143 NATO, 33, 79, 95, 102 natural disasters, 189 earthquake, Tashkent, 190, 195 See also climate: change; ice: melt natural hazards, 189 Navy Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit (NMNRU), 223–24 New Age, 293 Nielsen, Henry, 165 Norris, George, 165 Norvegia, 176 Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition (NBSX, 1949–52), 168–69 Norwegian Polar Institute, 30, 169, 173, 176 nuclear ballistic missiles, 92 nuclear power plant, 3, 93–99

Kazakhstan, 5, 9, 189–208, 267 King, Lester, 167 Krueger, Philip G., 77 Kuroiwa, Daisuke, 77 laboratory, 7, 10, 22n14, 25n29, 30–31, 35, 49, 52–53, 55–59, 75, 98–99, 166, 211–35 Arctic Construction and Frost Effects Laboratory (ACFEL), 75–76, 75n38 Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), 74n29, 75, 75n38, 75n40, 78, 74n29, 99 Natick Laboratories, 76 Natural Laboratory, 10, 52, 212–16, 225–26 snow laboratory, 22n14, 49, 55–58 large technological system, LTS, 26 Limited Test Ban Treaty, 191 Liverpool Island, 165

Mariana Trench, 175 Marion Island, 168n28, 170 Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), 218, 220 Mawson, Sir Douglas, 167 Medeo skating arena, 193 media event, 25 Messner, Reinhold, 11, 285–308 military, 297 militarization, 6, 70, 109, 111–12, 125, 191n8, 313 bases, 93, 96, 98, 100, 110–11, 114–15, 200 See also US military modernization, 71, 112, 114 Molotovsk, 10–11, 253–84 Monroe Doctrine, 89 mountainous environments, 189–90, 195, 199 Mount Rose, 51, 55

Olympic Games, 9, 190, 192, 195, 202 Operation Highjump, 220–26 ozone depletion, 217

Index 321

patriotism, 57, 257, 267 Paulcke, Georg Wilhelm, 51–55, 58, 58n60 peaceful explosions, 191 Peary, Josephine Diebitsch, 90 Peary, Robert E., 90, 102 People’s Republic of China, 5, 190–91, 201, 236, 238–39 Peter I. Island, 169 Petersen, Nikolaj, 5 Peterson, Val, 102 Pike, Geoffrey, 92 Polar Geographical Institute, 173 polar warming, 32, 71 postcolonialism, 6, 149–50 Project Iceworm, 89, 95–104, 121n57, 165 pseudoscience, 10, 236, 243, 243n41, 245 pykrete, 92 Pyne, Stephen, 163 Queen Maud Land, 168, 170, 172, 175 Rasmussen, Johan, 166 Rickover, Admiral Hyman, 92 Roberts, Brian, 170 Sami, 22, 31, 34 scale, 3, 28, 31, 53, 56, 76, 90, 92, 99, 175, 195, 197, 201, 215, 220–23, 225, 241, 243, 262, 303, 309, 311, 312, 313 Scandinavia, 22–23, 22n12, 29–31, 33, 71 Scheuchzer, Johann Jakob, 50–51 Schumann, T. E. W., 167–72, 175n79 self technique, 292–94, 301 Severodvinsk, 10–11, 253–84 Shackleton, Ernest, 218, 286–90, 310 Smuts, Jan Christian, 167, 167n22 Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment (SIPRE), 7–8, 50, 60, 75–77, 75n38 Solberg, Halvor, 169n37, 170 Solomon, Stuart, 170–71, 176 Sorge, Ernst, 52 South Africa, 5, 9, 148, 163, 165, 167–77, 167n22, 168n23, 168n28, 175n79 South African National Committee for Antarctic Research (SANCAR), 172

South African Navy, 171, 174 Soviet Union (USSR), 4–7, 9–10, 12, 29n44, 30, 33, 70–71, 75, 92–93, 95, 100, 110, 139–40, 142–44, 147–48, 151–54, 168n23, 171–172, 189–92, 189n1, 196–97, 199, 201–2, 211n2, 236–39, 241, 244–45, 254, 258, 267, 309–11, 314–15 Soviet vessel Lena, 172 Sputnik, 140, 144, 154, 240n2 Sputnik 1, 142–43 Sputnik 2, 142 Strategic Bomber Command, 92 Stuhlinger, Ernst, 218, 220 submarines, 3, 10, 92–94, 98, 223–24, 253, 257, 265, 267 Sverdrup, Harald Ulrik, 30, 33, 169, 171– 72, 177 Switzerland, 5, 7, 29n44, 49, 51–52, 55, 57–60, 73–74, 74n30, 144, 198, 201n63, 311 temporalities, 34 terra nullius, 8, 102, 237 Thompson Island, 165 Thule Air Base, 101, 165 tipping point, 26–27, 34 tourism, 9, 29, 50, 52, 57, 59, 124, 127, 189, 191, 193, 195, 201–2, 294, 296, 299 Treaty on Outer Space, 211 Treaty on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, 140, 151 Trudeau, Arthur G., 70, 73 Union Weather Service, 167 United States Antarctic Research Program (USARP), 218 United States Coast Guard (USCG), 90–91 US Army Air Forces, 91 US Army Corps of Engineers, 5, 8, 50, 75 US military, 5–6, 59, 69–76, 75n38, 75n41, 78–79, 79n61, 89–93, 98, 100–2, 221 US Navy, 30, 92–94, 102–3, 145, 220, 223, 225 USS Habbakuk, 92 van der Merwe, J. J., 171

322 Index

van Rooy, M. P., 171, 175 Vogt, Benjamin, 166 von Braun, Wernher, 218, 221, 221n48, 223 vulnerability, 34, 189, 313 Washburn, Albert Lincoln, 69, 77, 77n48, 79 Washington Conference, October 1959, 175 weather stations, 6–9, 120–21, 195 talk, 254–55, 264 Wegener, Alfred, 6, 12, 52, 98, 167 whaling, 9, 165–66, 166n10, 168, 173, 177

wilderness, 11, 294–96, 300, 302 Wilson, Charles R., 72 winter sports, 189–91, 194–95, 202 worldview, 26 World War II, 5–7, 21, 24, 49, 55, 58–59, 70–2, 74, 76, 89–92, 94, 102, 110, 110n13, 113–14, 116, 121, 125, 139–40, 145, 154, 167, 189, 191, 193, 220, 224, 256, 309–10 yeti, 10, 236–53. See also Abominable Snowman Zavatti, Silvio, 173–74, 174n71