In victory, there are no questions asked. After Roald Amundsen won the race for the South Pole on 14 December 1911 very few cared how he did it, least of all himself. As Fridtjof Nansen put it in his preface to Amundsen's book, The South Pole, ‘When the discoverer comes home in triumph, everybody cheers him. We are all proud of the accomplished deed…. We feel we have got a new feather in our cap, and got it cheaply’. Only the cognoscenti brood over the whys and wherefores, and the little question—how?

In 1974 the Norwegian government passed a Royal Decree entitled ‘Kongelig Resolusjon om forskrifter om fredning m.v. av kulturminner pa Svalbard og Jan Mayen’ (Royal Resolution on regulations concerning the protection of cultural monuments on Svalbard and Jan Mayen). Since the appointment of a government inspector in 1976 a systematic survey of the permanent cultural monuments on Svalbard has been carried out. The results have so far confirmed the previously held impression that Svalbard is indeed very rich in cultural monuments left by man's exploits in previous centuries. This article is concerned with some of the typical monuments up to the turn of the 20th century. In addition the regulations for the protection of cultural monuments passed in 1974 are discussed.

Lloyd's Register of Shipping has published losses of all ocean-going merchant ships over 100 tonnes since 1890, including those resulting from encounters with ice. The list presented here gives details of where and how a loss due to ice occurred and provides the nationality of the ship and, where known, its route and cargo. Some place-names have changed since the ship loss, and where these have been found the present-day names follow in square brackets; place-names which have not been located are given in quotes. Changes have also occurred with respect to countries and flags, but in order to avoid confusion the entries in the flag column have been left as recorded at the time of the loss.

Ever since the early explorers realized that the Arctic sea ice is continually moving, breaking and shifting, it has been the subject of scientific curiosity. Beginning with Fridtjof Nansen's crossing of the Arctic Ocean in 1893–96, knowledge has been accumulated about the ocean, the ice, and the atmosphere in the Arctic by means of some 30 drifting ice stations, and numerous aircraft landings and submarine crossings.

Two field experiments took place in 1978 as part of a project to study ocean wave attenuation in the marginal pack ice zone and the effect of ocean waves on floe break-up and ice dynamics. The main partners in the project are the Scott Polar Research Institute and the Electromagnetics Institute, Technical University of Denmark (TUD), Lyngby, with funding from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Washington DC, and the Danish government. The first experiment was a pilot study carried out in co-operation with C-CORE (Centre for Cold Oceans Resources Engineering) at Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John's, and took place in the Labrador Sea. The second experiment was a major field study carried out in September 1978 from Mesters Vig, east Greenland. The project will be completed by a second main experiment at Mesters Vig in summer 1979, with supporting experiments in the Bering Sea and west Greenland in spring 1979.

The 1978 Cambridge Spitsbergen Expedition was organized along similar lines to those of previous years by C. A. G. Pickton and was in the field from late June to mid-August. Expedition members were: W. B. Harland (leader), C. A. G. Pickton, I. J. Fairchild, P. F. Rawson, M. J. Hambrey and P. Waddams (geologists); T. H. Druitt, J. H. Barne and D. A. Waldron (geological assistants); R. Davies (engineer); N. Cox and J. Caner (boat captains).

In 1974 an eight-man party spent six weeks exploring the northern part of the K.I.V. Steenstrups Bræer area of east Greenland from a base camp in Tasîlaq. A further expedition, taking advantage of the base camp, depots and knowledge of the route inland, and travelling northwards within the nunatak zone of the little known Kong Christian IX.s Land, was successfully accomplished during July and August 1978 through the previously unvisited Kronprins Frederiks Bjerge.

A privately sponsored eight-man expedition in a small auxiliary sailing ship, Solo, left Sydney on 15 December 1977 destined for the Antarctic. The objectives of the expedition included sea temperature and salinity measurements near icebergs, the collection of biological and geological specimens, and an assessment of the efficiency of a low-cost expedition such as this for future work in Antarctic waters. Solo, a 25-year-old steel yawl, has a length of 17 m, a 4-m beam and a draught of 2.5 m, and carries a 100-hp diesel motor. She was equipped with a satellite tracking device so that her position at the time of any observation might subsequently be located. The expedition was led by Dr David Lewis who, five years previously, had sailed single-handed to the Antarctic in his yacht Ice Bird (see Polar Record, Vol 18, No 112, p 79–83).

The 1977–78 Ross Ice Shelf Project (RISP) field season was marked by two major achievements: completion of the Ross Ice Geophysical and Glaciological Survey (RIGGS) and successful penetration of the ice shelf at the RISP drill camp (82°22′S 168°38′N). The RIGGS programme visited nearly 200 sites over four field seasons, providing complete coverage of the shelf with measurements of ice thickness and velocity, surface strain rates, bottom depth, accumulation, and mean annual temperature. The survey work was conducted by Twin Otter aircraft operating from six temporary base camps. Tidal gravity measurements were made at these six camps and a few additional sites.