Mister President and Mrs Moussaieff, Your Majesties and Your Royal Highness, Lady Foreign Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen!

• Main Authors: Sverker Sörlin, Vilhjálmur Stefánsson, Hans Ahlmann, The, Quest For An
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: Ahlmann; Arctic; Stefansson; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.502.2946; http://www.svs.is/Sverker Sorlin.pdf

I am proud of the honour that has been bestowed on me to speak on this occasion – in such a wonderful natural setting, and in this lively northern community. I would like to thank the Institute, Níels Einarsson and everyone else who has invited me. Probably no one – not even Níels – could have known that (and I certainly smiled twice inside when I received the invitation), but in fact Vilhjalmur Stefansson and his ideas had intrigued me for a very long time. And I thought it a perfect fit for this occasion to talk both of Stefansson and of his Swedish colleague in Arctic studies, Hans W:son Ahlmann, who has also interested me in my work and who holds a significant role in Swedish North Atlantic diplomacy. Together these two, scientist-diplomats of sorts, shared ideas on the human aspects of the Arctic, ideas that may be worth remembering on a day like this, when new initiatives and policies are being carved out for this vast and important region. I Already as a student I became interested in the historical geography of the polar regions, and in my raids in the libraries I soon came across the name Stefansson and books by him such as The Friendly Arctic and The Northward Course of Empire, both published in