Sagas, law texts, court and ecclesiastical manuscripts, the King's Mirror, and later texts of the 17th and 18th centuries provide information on whaling activities in Iceland during the classical period (up to 1300) and later. Most references concern whales washed or driven ashore, rather than hunted in the open sea. Beached whales were clearly regarded as valuable food resources, generating disputes, litigation and other social conflict among the communities of the Icelandic Commonwealth.

Between February 1972 and January 1983, successively using positioning satellites Eole, Nimbus F, Tiros N-Argos, movements of 21 Antarctic icebergs were monitored daily from radio transmissions; 17 of the bergs were followed over periods of 228–828 days through distances of 1600 to 8000 km (2000 to 5000 nautical miles, nm). Mean daily positions, calculated from several observations, were accurate to less than 5.5 km (3 nm) for Eole and Nimbus, 0.9 km (0.5 nm) for Argos. Grouped into three areas (Weddell Sea, Enderby Land to Adelie Land, Ross Sea), the trajectories cover four fifths of the continental periphery. Movements clearly indicate singular points along the boundary between the two circumpolar currents, the East Wind and West Wind drifts, and variations in the strength and direction of flow of these currents; submarine topography and other underlying causes are suggested.

Seismic survey activities in the western Beaufort Sea, involving ships and sound production, were monitored in autumn 1982 for their possible effects on migrating Bowhead whales Balaena mysticetus. The study, begun in 1981 by die Minerals Management Service of the US Department of the Interior, covered offshore waters between the Alaskan coast and 72°N. Distribution, behaviour and numbers of whales were recorded, and procedures were established for monitoring and controlling seismic activities in their presence.

Vertical accelerometers deployed on fast ice in Raudfjorden, Svalbard in early summer 1983 recorded characteristics of ice-coupled waves at the ice edge and during their passage under die ice sheet. Subsequent analysis indicated an unexpected increase in amplitude of waves of all periods some 20 to 30 m in from die ice edge. This is associated with a pair of heavily-damped waves, which become especially relevant at or beyond some critical angle and decay rapidly with distance from the edge; their coalescence may account for the increase in wave amplitude, and explain why ice tends to break out in strips parallel to the ice edge.

The Russian explorer V. A. Rusanov's geological expeditions to Novaya Zemlya (1908–11) gained him the experience that, in 1912, secured his appointment as leader of a government expedition to Svalbard. In the sealing ship Gerkules Rusanov and 14 others left Aleksandrovsk on 26 June, spending most of July and August staking claims, collecting specimens and inspecting coalmining operation around the islands. In late August Gerkules headed east for Novaya Zemlya and an attempt at the Northeast Passage. Neither ship nor crew were seen again, but relics of the expedition have since been found on islands in the Kara Sea; in 1978 a plaque commemorating the expedition was erected on Mys Primetnyy, where a campsite and many relics were identified.

Few paintings are better known to polar historians than Stephen Pearce's 1851 group portrait of the Arctic Council (Polar Record, 6 (43): 385). The Council consisted of experts consulted by the Admiralty for advice upon the search for Sir John Franklin and the crews of H.M.S. Erebus and Terror, which had been lost among the Canadian arctic islands since 1845. Of the ten persons represented all except one were either naval officers or civilians officially connected with the Navy. The exception was Edward Sabine, Colonel in the Royal Artillery. How did this landsman find his way into such a salty gathering?