The reality, though, is that the Arctic is divided by boundary lines radiating from the North Pole. Boundaries imposed by "Great Powers" not by the Northland migratory hunters and gatherers who live "everywhere and nowhere".
The effects of 19th century colonialism and 20th century militarism were profound and universal for the inhabitants of Northland, many of whom transitioned from hunters to wage earners. Their forests were destroyed, rivers polluted, pasturelands flooded and herds dispersed. Their health records are now poor and unemployment is high.
Domestic crime, drunkenness and suicide are three or four times the national average of their respective countries.
In 1925 Canada was the first to extend its borders northward, followed quickly by the USSR, Norway, United States, Sweden, Finland, Denmark (through Greenland) and finally Iceland. The Cold War ramped up the military impact on Northland.
In 1942 the US established an air force base at Goose Bay in northern Canada as a stop-off point on the flight to Europe and then converted a vast area of "empty" land into a "Tactical Fighter Weapons Training Centre" (bombing range). Paranoid that the USSR would send nuclear missiles over the pole, the US deployed radar stations and invited its Nato allies to practice low-level flying over Innu land at Goose Bay.
By 1990 there were around 40,000 annual "practice flights" and the Innu caribou herd had halved since the invasion began.
Not to be outdone, the Soviets established the Rogachevo air base on the far north island of Nova Zembla (also called Novaya Zemlya), shifted off all the native Nenets in 1957 and used the island to test nuclear weapons. In 1961 they dropped the "Tsar Bomba", the largest and most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated. When testing concluded it transpired that not all the Nenet nomads had been evacuated.
Under the Northland ice and sea are reputed reserves of oil and natural gas.
In retrospect the question has to be asked: Was it all worth it? To consume vast amounts of non-renewable resources to wreak havoc on natural environments; and inhabitants living in some sort of harmony with those environments.
There must be a better way.
Northland represents a millisphere dominated by nation states — which are themselves composed of millispheres.
A rule that no millisphere, or group of millispheres, should dominate any other millisphere would be a good place to start.
When Fred Frederikse is not building, he is a self-directed student of geography and traveller, and in his spare time he is the co-chair of the Whanganui Musicians' Club
