Newsreel: Arctic Ice Cap Adventure - 1957

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The Arctic is the region around the Earth's North Pole, opposite the Antarctic region around the South Pole. The Arctic includes the Arctic Ocean (which overlies the North Pole) and parts of Canada, Greenland  (a territory of Denmark), Russia, the United States (Alaska), Iceland, Norway, Sweden  and Finland.

Under international law, no country currently owns the North Pole or the region of the Arctic Ocean surrounding it. The five surrounding Arctic states, Russia, the United States (via Alaska), Canada, Norway and Denmark  (via Greenland), are limited to an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles (370 km; 230 mi) adjacent to their coasts.

Since 1937, the whole Arctic region has been extensively explored by Soviet and Russian manned drifting ice stations. Since 1937 at least 88 polar crews established and occupied scientific settlements on the drift ice and were carried thousands of kilometers by the ice flow.

In 1925, based upon the Sector Principle, Canada became the first country to extend its boundaries northward to the North Pole, at least on paper, between 60°W and 141°W longitude, a claim that is not universally recognized (there are in fact 415 nmi (769 km; 478 mi) nautical miles of ocean between the Pole and Canada's northernmost land point). In 1926 Russia fixed its claim in Soviet law (32°04'35"E to 168°49'30"W). Norway (5°E to 35°E) made similar sector claims — as did the United States (170°W to 141°W), but that sector contained only a few islands so the claim was not pressed. Denmark's sovereignty over all of Greenland was recognized by the United States in 1916 and by an international court in 1933. Denmark could also conceivably claim an Arctic sector (60°W to 10°W).

In the context of the Cold War, Canada sent Inuit families to the far north in the High Arctic relocation, partly to establish territoriality.

In addition, Canada claims the water within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago as its own internal waters. The United States is one of the countries which does not recognize Canada's, or any other countries', Arctic water claims, and has allegedly sent nuclear submarines under the ice near Canadian islands without requesting permission.

On April 15, 1926, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR declared the territory between two lines (35°E and 170°W) drawn from Murmansk to the North Pole and from the Chukchi Peninsula to the North Pole to be Soviet territory.

The word Arctic comes from the Greek αρκτικός (arktikos), "near the Bear, arctic, northern" and that from the word άρκτος (arktos), which means bear.  The name refers either to the constellation Ursa Major, the "Great Bear", which is prominent in the northern portion of the celestial sphere, or to the constellation Ursa Minor, the "Little Bear", which contains Polaris, the Pole Star, also known as the North Star.

The Arctic region can be defined as the area north of the Arctic Circle (66° 33’N), which is the approximate limit of the midnight sun and the polar night. Alternatively, it can be defined as the region where the average temperature for the warmest month (July) is below 10 °C (50 °F); the northernmost tree line roughly follows the isotherm at the boundary of this region. Socially and politically, the Arctic region includes the northern territories of the eight Arctic states, although by natural science definitions much of this territory is considered subarctic.

The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean (which is sometimes considered to be a northern arm of the Atlantic Ocean) surrounded by treeless permafrost. In recent years the extent of the sea ice has declined.  Life in the Arctic includes organisms living in the ice, zooplankton and phytoplankton, fish and marine mammals, birds, land animals, plants, and human societies.

The Arctic region is a unique area among Earth's ecosystems. The cultures in the region and the Arctic indigenous peoples have adapted to its cold and extreme conditions.