THE NORTH POLE
An essay exploring the significance of the symbolic point at the top of the world
THE NORTH POLE is world news again. There was a flurry of publicity in 2007 when a Russian submarine placed a metal flag on the seabed at latitude 90 degrees north. No claim was made, and the event had no geographical significance or political impact, but it demonstrated Russian technology and capability in the Arctic Ocean. It wasn’t until December 2014 that Denmark claimed the North Pole and surrounding area under the rules of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (to which all northern nations are signatories), with Russia following suit in August 2015 and Canada later announcing plans to submit its own Arctic continental shelf claim, including the pole, by 2018. This raises historical, political and scientific questions about the North Pole itself. What is it, where exactly is it, and why is it such an object of interest? In a crude way, the North Pole is easy to define. It’s simply the north end of the axis around which our planet rotates, emerging from the solid earth on the lower flank of the Lomonosov Ridge, an undersea mountain range, at a depth of 4,621 metres beneath the jumbled sea ice of the Arctic Ocean. This axis wobbles a bit, rather like an unbalanced wheel with a faulty bearing, so the precise pole is fleeting or meaningless. The North Pole itself is not a place, but as a mathematical or observational construct, it is essential for map-makers and has been a powerful symbol for centuries.
Displaying a flag at the North Pole has been an international game for about a century. On the ice-covered ocean surface, as close to 90 degrees north as navigation systems could determine, flags of many nations — United States, U.s.s.r./russia, United Kingdom, Canada, Norway and France, at least — have been unfurled, carried there by ships, aircraft, submarines, skidoos, dog teams and cross-ocean skiers. Games aside, the importance of the North Pole, the challenge it represents and the fascination it has for governments, for science and for adventurers has a much longer history. Egyptian, Arab and Greek stargazers noted as early as 3000 BC that the heavens revolved around a single point, close to a star in the tail of the constellation now known as Ursa Minor (Little Bear). The Greeks named this star Polaris, directly under which there must be a North Pole (pivot point) on the Earth and, by extension, a South Pole on the opposite side of the globe. They divided the Earth into degrees of latitude, and thus the North Pole was exactly 90 degrees north, at right angles to the plane of the equator. Around 320 BC, the first recorded Arctic navigator, Pytheas, voyaged north from Greece past the coasts of France and Britain until he encountered what must have been sea ice. He reported that the pole star was very high overhead and that huge white bears roamed on the sea, confirming speculations that the regions under Polaris were guarded by the celestial bears Arctos, and it has been known as the Arctic ever since. The first known description of the North Pole itself is in a 1360 work by the Oxford scholar Nicholas of Linne, entitled De Inventione Fortunata and subtitled qui liber incipit a gradua 54 usque ad polum (“which book begins at latitude 54 degrees and goes as far as the pole”). No copies are known to exist today, but the book was widely quoted and shows that by the 14th century, degrees of latitude were already in use and that the North Pole was a widely understood concept. Johannes Ruysch of the Netherlands made one of the first maps of the North Pole region (see page 50). On his map, which was included as Plate 1 in the 1506 edition of Ptolemy’s The Geography, he cites his source: “In the book De Inventione Fortunata it may be read that at the North Pole there is a high mountain of magnetic stone 33 German miles in circumference. This is surrounded by mare sugunum which pours out water like a vessel through openings below. Around it are four islands, surrounded by extensive desolate mountains for 24 days’ journey.” It is speculated today that Nicholas of Linne probably assembled his information from Norse seafaring stories and made a logical attempt to explain the mysterious force that attracted the magnetic lodestone, or compass, which was at that time coming into use. Later map-makers, such as Mercator, who produced world charts ( above) that were continually updated as new discoveries were made, retained the four islands and the central mountain at the North Pole until the 17th century.
CLAIMS TO THE NORTH POLE have a long history. In 1578, Queen Elizabeth I of England asked scholar John Dee to produce an argument for her rights to the northern lands that Martin Frobisher had visited and claimed in her name in 157678. The result was a remarkable document with a large map ( opposite BOTTOM) that
THE NORTH POLE ITSELF IS NOT A PLACE, BUT AS A MATHEMATICAL OR OBSERVATIONAL CONSTRUCT IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR MAPMAKERS AND HAS BEEN A POWERFUL SYMBOL FOR CENTURIES.
cites in detail the British monarchy’s grounds for sovereignty over much of the undiscovered modern world, including “Groenland and all northern isles compassing ... even until the North Pole.” This undoubtedly spurred and helped maintain an interest in Britain in polar exploration. During the 17th and 18th centuries, most exploration focused on geographic discoveries of new lands and trade routes between Europe and China or the Spice Islands (the Indonesian Maluku Islands). But to some, to stand at the exact centre of rotation was seen as a triumph, a demonstration that “man” was able to conquer all physical obstacles and rule the Earth. More
Fred Roots, a geologist, geophysicist, explorer and diplomat with an Antarctic mountain range (the Roots Range) named in his honour, was a pioneer of polar science and influenced research and climate policy around the world during his storied career. He submitted this essay to Canadian Geographic just before his death in October 2016 at age 93.
specifically, the challenge of reaching the highest latitude became a question of the superiority of nations. British Parliament offered a substantial prize in 1742 for the first ship to transit the Northwest Passage and later also prizes for “farthest north,” which legitimized government backing of national rivalries to reach the pole. Other philosophies were also emerging, however, largely as a result of scientific advancements. In 1773, the Royal Society of London sponsored the first truly multidisciplinary scientific expedition anywhere: “A voyage towards the North-pole to be of service to the promotion of natural knowledge,” commanded by Constantine Phipps. The expedition returned with a wealth of information on the temperature, depth and salinity of the Arctic Ocean, careful descriptions and classifications of fish, birds, sea mammals (they even collected a whale fetus) and polar bears, information on the aurora, patterns of magnetism and gravity measurements that improved calculations of the shape of the planet. In several countries in Europe and in the United States, a different mindset developed between the geographical societies, for which exploration of new territories and reaching the poles was a national honour and duty, and the academies and royal societies, which focused on increasing knowledge of natural phenomena. That distinction has lasted almost two centuries and has influenced both the science and the history of the polar regions. In 1874, Karl Weyprecht of Austria returned from his second expedition, where he had investigated the relationship between the aurora and the fluctuations of magnetic activity — and incidentally discovered Franz Josef Land (hence the Austrian name for the most northerly archipelago north of Asia). He undertook a campaign aimed at the scientific authorities: “Past Arctic explorations have been adventurous and of little value. They constitute an international steeplechase to the North Pole. Immense sums have been spent and much hardship endured for the mere purpose of topographic and geographic observation.” Weyprecht proposed new goals for polar exploration based on cooperative contribution to natural science rather than competition for discovery. His ideas were considered radical and unpatriotic and, at first, were strongly opposed by the scientific establishment. But his logic gradually won over the leading scientists and academies of the day, and an international polar commission was formed to plan a coordinated program of studies. Weyprecht drew up a number of principles, including that the Earth should be studied as a planet with all parts connected, that geographic discovery is of importance according to the degree to which it extends the field of scientific investigation and that the geographic pole has no greater significance for science than any other point in high latitude — unless for observing phenomena of planetary behaviour. The outcome was the International Polar Year, which has become a major scientific influence over the last 130-plus years. For the first International Polar Year (1882-83),
15 expeditions sponsored by 11 countries went to Arctic and sub-antarctic locations and carried out a rigorous 13-month program of simultaneous observations in a wide range of subjects. Fourteen subsidiary stations were set up in sub-polar settlements, and 18 already established observatories throughout the world took comparable observations on the same schedule. IPY-I was the first coordinated study of the entire planet (125 years later, IPY-IV 2007-08 was the largest multidisciplinary scientific activity ever, with institutions from 67 countries and 10,000 scientists working on 220 projects). The consequences of the International Polar Years are important far beyond the polar regions. They include the widespread practice of peer review, standardized calibration of instruments and acceptance of national responsibility to contribute to knowledge beyond national borders.
DESPITE THE PHILOSOPHICAL and scientific success of the first International Polar Year, the steeplechase to the North Pole continued. In 1909, after several futile attempts, Robert Peary of the United States Navy reached what he determined to be the North Pole. To be sure of his position, he travelled beyond his calculated spot and also a number of kilometres at right angles to his approach route to take supplementary readings of the sun. The general conclusion is that this experienced naval officer can be given credit for first reaching the pole, as accurately as his instruments and navigation tables allowed. But where exactly was, or is, the centre of rotation? Sources of error and uncertainty in attempts to locate the axis of our planet include the “polar wobble,” refraction of light from the sun or stars, the shifting or rotation of the sea ice upon which instruments are placed, and a tilting of the sea and ice cover by ocean currents and wind, which causes the horizon to be less than perfectly perpendicular to the pull of gravity. Add to these problems the navigation tables available to Peary, which until almost 50 years ago were based on the incorrect assumption that Earth is a perfect sphere. The precise shape of the Earth and the distribution of the pull of gravity near the North Pole became truly important with the advent of polar-orbiting satellites and long-range rockets in the late 1950s and the consequent military development in the U.S. and U.S.S.R. of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Geodesists and astronomers had already calculated a mathematical figure for the planet, known as the geoid, determining that it’s a slightly flattened sphere, some 40 kilometres narrower between the poles than at the equator. For a single pass of a satellite, the uncertainty in the geoid calculation was insignificant. But with repeated passes, errors accumulated. The best way to check this was a prolonged comparison of satellite passes with the apparent movements of the stars — using instruments located as close as possible to the pole. The Canadian Polar Continental Shelf Project, of which I was director, studied this problem. In 1967, we determined whether it would be feasible to take readings from stations on drifting sea ice. The party spent nearly two weeks camping and setting up instruments between 89 and 90 degrees north. To establish a fixed location on the sea floor, we built a battery-powered sonar transponder that could be activated by a sound signal from the surface and that would then send a coded signal back from the deep. The time interval between these signals gave us quite an accurate measurement of the distance between the transponder and the instrument above. The transponder was a tube 15 centimetres in diameter and 1½ metres long. We called it, naturally, “The North Pole,” so we painted that name on it. And because we were all convinced of the international value of our work, before the instrument was sealed with fibreglass resin, we also applied flag stickers — from a school geography book — of the United Nations itself,
THE NORTH POLE, A PLACE WITHOUT DIMENSIONS, BELONGS TO NO COUNTRY, AND WE HOPED OUR WORK WOULD BE USEFUL TO ALL HUMANKIND.
all circumpolar countries (including the U.S.S.R.) and all other UN member states. We now had a real “pole” at the North Pole. Thus it came about that a Canadian party of scientists spontaneously placed all the flags of the United Nations on the sea bed at the North Pole — 40 years before Russia planted a second flag. As I wrote to my superior, the North Pole, a point without dimensions, belongs to no country, and we hoped that our work would be useful to all humankind.
WE RETURNED to the North Pole with a larger party and a lot of sophisticated equipment on April 2, 1969, establishing camp on a big ice floe about 18 kilometres “upstream” in the hopes that it might drift close to the pole itself. We made a large snow igloo, guaranteed non-metallic, to house the magnetic instruments. A transponder, larger and more powerful than the first, was dropped through the ice within a few hundred metres of the centre of planetary rotation, and we hoped that it went nearly straight down to the sea bed. A few days later, we dropped a second one 12 kilometres away, thus improving the accuracy with which we could track our movement. Some interesting diversions during this month in residence at the North Pole: people from five countries were in our party, so we laid out a ski race course and held the “First International North Pole Ski Race.” It covered most degrees of longitude and the international date line, so depending on direction taken, one could finish the day before or the day after starting. Toward the end of our stay, I asked our Inuk technician how he felt being the first northern Indigenous person to work at the North Pole. He simply said, “No foxes. No women. Sun gone crazy.” Thanks to our work, satellite trajectories were corrected, navigation tables updated, and the data was applied to global positioning systems, which at the time were just being developed. The polar wobble was noted over a few weeks, providing material for new speculation on the influence of geological, oceanic and even major atmospheric events on the planetary balance. To this day, the measurements made by the Canadian party at the North Pole nearly 50 years ago provide the basis for defining the boundaries of areas once again in the news as claims are made for jurisdiction in anticipation that climate warming will change the accessibility of the Arctic. Anyone who today uses a GPS in northern areas or rides in an aircraft flying a northern great circle route benefits from software that incorporates and is refined from readings taken through a big theodolite on the sea ice near the North Pole — observations of the first generation of satellites passing under the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor in 1967 and 1969. Truly, Arctos is still looking after us in the Arctic, and the star in the little bear’s tail is still important.