Encyclopedia Arctica

Abstract

Encyclopedia Arctica is to be like Britannica, but instead of taking in the whole globe our work is to focus on the Arctic and shade off into the Subarctic. For EA purposes, the Arctic has not as yet been defined (as of 1948). The Subarctic on land has been considered provisionally as the region north of a line connecting the most southerly points at which permafrost has been discovered, whether in the Old or New World. According to Soviet writers of 1947, this would place within the sphere of EA about 47% of all their territories, mainland and islands; by estimates of various Canadian geologists and geographers, the sphere of EA would cover anything between 50% and 70% of their country's land surface. It has not yet been decided for EA whether Newfoundland, Iceland, and Sakhalin are to be appended to the Subarctic, nor has the decision been made for the Kuriles. Arbitrarily it has been settled that all of political Alaska will be included, though some of the Aleutian Islands are as far south as Edmonton or Liverpool and although many components of that island chain seldom or never get colder, near sea level, than the minimum records of the State of Florida. At sea the outermost fringe of the Subarctic will be, in any longitude, the southern limit of drift sea ice or of icebergs, whichever is more southerly. EA is to have not less than five million and not more than six million words. Its goal, which we do not expect to approach closely, is to answer every question that any intelligent and reasonable person may want to ask concerning the region geographically covered. This means that the range will be from geophysics to Eskimo music and from the northern lights to Christian missions. We cover everything, whether imaginary or prehensible, from the vicinity of 49° N. Lat. on the northern shore of Lake Superior, where permafrost was uncovered during the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway around 1880, to 90° N. Lat. which Peary first attained in 1909. There willhave to be some account both of how the permafrost was discovered and of how the North Pole was discovered. ...