Sutherland's original paper was dismantled by University of Waterloo anthropologist Robert Park in an article in Antiquity magazine entitled, "Contact between the Norse Vikings and the Dorset culture in Arctic Canada".

One line of Park's attack points to pre-870 A.D. carbon dating of supposed Norse material from the Nanook site. That is the accepted date of first Norse settlement of Iceland and documented in the famous Landnámabók. This would impose a firm time line on any contact further West.

A recent article in The Iceland Review though describes the analysis of physicist Páll Theódórsson which pushes the settlement of Iceland back 200 years. While his work has (as far as I can determine) yet to be thoroughly critiqued by others, it may weaken one aspect of Park's arguments.

It will be interesting to see how these arguments play out.

The evidence looks fairly compelling that there was at least some level of contact, which seems reasonable given that they knew the area well enough to give it a name. Interestingly there is evidence of rat droppings which implies Viking ships at Baffin Island as opposed to contact possibly established in the other direction.

An early article states that radio carbon dating on some spun yarn gives a date several hundred years prior to Viking contact, which suggests earlier contact with Europeans than previously thought.

Enoki Kunuk headed off to hunt caribou but got his snowmobile stuck by the thaw 100 kilometers from home. The military called of the search for him after more than two weeks, but he was discovered alive and well 10 days later having kept himself fed and sheltered. Not bad for 81.

Nettilling Lake is the largest lake on an island in the world. The two islands in the picture are Prince Charles Island (the largest on the left) and Air Force Island which along with Foley Island (not pictured) are the last large landmasses discovered in North America.

They were only found to be separate islands from pictures taken by aerial overflights by the Canadian Air Force in 1948.

Oddly enough these islands are close by another group, the Spicer Islands, rediscovered in 1946.

A Canadian air-borne expedition to the Arctic has rediscovered the Spicer Islands and a number of hitherto unknown islands under the eaves of the continent. The Spicer Islands were discovered in 1897 by Captain Spicer of New Bedford. They were duly marked on maps and charts but had never since been found and there was doubt of their existence.

New York Times, September 10, 1946

Among all the pieces written about it I couldn't find any that referenced the actual article itself so I thought I'd put one here...

It is located at 68.218830°N 234.250778°E (or 68.218830°N 125.749222°W). Using the same prime meridian as Earth this would project onto a spot about 120 miles northwest of Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada.

The Martian Arctic Circle is at 64.81°N, which puts the lander around 3.4° North of the circle. Since Earth's axial tilt is somewhat less extreme than Mars' (23.439281° vs 25.19°), Earth's Arctic Circle is at 66.56083°N.

Keeping the longitude the same, but projecting the position 3.4° North of Earth's Arctic Circle places the landing spot at the equivalent of a location in Franklin Bay in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of the Northwest Territories.

See the map here.

The Phoenix Mars Lander took a series of shots of the sun hanging low over the Martian North Pole. With the lander being above the Arctic Circle and it being Summer in the Northern Hemisphere, the montage shows how the sun never dips below the horizon. Beautiful.

More details at the image's page. The entire gallery of images is here.

Polar bears are not native to Iceland. Prior to these two incidences there hadn't been a bear seen in Iceland in 20 years. More details here, and a map.

"The Good Cop" is part of the short story collection, once in a blue moon publish by the acorn book company. It's available from Amazon UK but used copies can probably be found in the U.S.

The full text of the story was published online by The Guardian back in April, 2004.

Currently, the “Barneo” camp located [on] drifting ice flow close to the North Pole point has a 500 people capacity in the period April-May. From next year, the camp will be extended to handle up to 3000 (!?!?!) people.

My God, this is turning into a bigger farce than Mount Everest.

In a related story maybe they won't be able to stay very long anyway:

The North Pole is at the moment covered only by one-year old ice, all of which will melt in the course of summer.

But nobody knows how the walrus that frequent Foxe Basin will react to the year-round presence of enormous freighters, up to 135,000 tonnes, that could become a daily sight by 2014 if the company's plans become reality.

Igloolik was the setting for the movie Atanarjuat.