Fifth Generation

I guess that few thought that a result of Global Warming would be the development and settlement of the Arctic and the opening of the Northwest Passage. It should not be surprising, however. During the last period of Global Warming, Greenland really was green and the Vikings set up permanent settlements and villages.

Now again people are starting settlements in very northern places. The most Northern settlement is the drifting ice camp set up by the Russian Federation called Barneo. Because of the shift in the ice the camp must be set up new every year. In the year 2007, it was not set up. The website to go to get information is at polus.org. The world’s most northern permanent settlement is Alert, Nunavut, Canada where you can also find the world’s most Northern post office. There are only 5 permanent residents. Stephen Harper recently visited there.

The most northern town is Longyearbyen, Norway, a town of over 1,000 named for an American John Longyear who owned a coal mining company. The world’s most northern populated settlement is Ny-Alesund, Norway with 30 residents. There is a hotel in Ny-Alesund called the North Pole Hotel.

Grise Fiord, Canada, is the most Northern civilian settlement in North America. It was founded by the Canadian government in 1953. Here is a quote from Wikipeida, “The settlement was created by the Canadian government in the year 1953 to assert sovereignty in the area. Inuit families from northern Quebec were relocated and promised homes and game to hunt, but the relocated people discovered no buildings and very little familiar wildlife. They also had to endure weeks of daytime darkness in the winter and sunlight in the nights during summers, unlike northern Quebec.”

Here is the Grise Fiord website, grisefiord.ca

The North Pole was previously ignored, but with our current technology and warmer temperatures, the Arctic is now gaining a lot of attention of the news and of capitalists just like it did the Vikings over 1000 years earlier.