Race is on to claim the Arctic Circle

With ice retreating, wrangling has already started on the uncovering of wastes and riches of the far north. Picture / NASA

Deep inside the Arctic Circle, hundreds of kilometres beyond the frontier of human habitation, a solitary red flag with a white cross flies in the freezing winds, its pole hammered into the unyielding rock of Hans Island. Next to it, a plaque tells the world the Vikings have returned.

The tiny island, a hostile wedge of rock poised between the north-west corner of Greenland and Canada's Ellesmere Island, where winter temperatures plummet to 40C below, is normally home to a seal colony and the occasional polar bear.

Now it's on the front line of the race to claim the North Pole, a modern scramble for the Arctic that has pitted tiny Denmark against its Nato ally Canada, with Russia and the United States lurking in the wings.

At stake, in what could be the last great territorial land-grab, is the promise of untold mineral riches that has prompted an increasing number of governments to throw tens of millions of pounds at scientific and military missions in a bid to get ahead.

These days the Vikings do not come in long ships. The Danish navy sent HDMS Vaedderen, a 3500-tonne frigate with a reinforced hull, into the disputed channel that forms the maritime border between Canada and Greenland, the world's largest island and a semi-independent Danish territory, and more importantly, only 804km south of the North Pole.

And the elite Sirius Patrol, a contingent of specially trained Arctic soldiers, completed a hazardous patrol to the north-east shore of Greenland. The success of the Vaedderen and Sirius missions in proving their ability to operate so far north has given Denmark the confidence to stake its claim to the North Pole.

Trine Dahl Jensen, a geologist, is heading the team of scientists tasked with proving that Denmark's northern frontier is a lot further north than anyone expected. She is more aware than most that the Danes' argument is complex and expensive to prove.

What they must resolve, Ms Dahl-Jensen says, is where Greenland's continental socket ends and where the ocean floor begins. Under the North Pole, the 2000km Lomonosov Ridge of mountains runs from north of Greenland to north of Siberia. If high-tech measurements prove Greenland's socket is attached to the ridge, they are in business. "We must be able to argue that it is a natural extension of Greenland."

In the lobby of her offices at the Geological Survey of Greenland and Denmark there is a mechanical reminder of what they are working towards. A giant Foucault's pendulum is tracking the rotation of the Earth around its South and North Pole axis. So far, no nation has secured territorial rights to either but the dawning of 2005 means the clock is ticking. That is the deadline for the Danish parliament to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The 1986 treaty affords coastal countries an economic zone extending 370km from their shores. If the socket is part of Greenland, then the North Pole could be part of Denmark.