| Summary: | Few historical topics and regions lend themselves to such grand narratives as the Arctic. Dramatic landscapes, extreme climate, heroic explorers and their national pride merge and provide us with fascinating and catchy stories. The current situation of climate change, new possibilities of exploiting natural resources and potential territorial conflict have placed the Arctic in the spotlight once more. Current tensions often call for historical explanation, and scholars hurry to provide them. My perspective on eighteenth century Russian concepts of the Arctic Ocean, however, does not immediately contribute to a better understanding of present challenges. I will not be telling the Russian side of the story in the race among nations to the North Pole or explain how the Russians came to plant a flag under the Pole in 2007. The argument in this article stems rather from a general and explicitly historical interest in territoriality and sovereignty; in concepts, consequences and contradictions. How could absolutist sovereignty, which in the eighteenth century was sovereignty in the making, work “beyond territory”?
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