ABSTRACT
This chapter purposes to address the often-repeated query 'Who Owns the Arctic?' against the backdrop of the cycles of Arctic fervour showing sovereignty of the Arctic in different temporal positions. On a circumpolar map of the Arctic, most of the region is coloured into some form of political organisation indicating the political authority of that territory. The term appears in Arctic discourse, referring to both domestic and international policy aspects of Arctic states, and this induces the need to unpack what these states mean when they refer to 'Arctic sovereignty'. In the Arctic, however, the stringent requirements for effective occupation were waved in lieu of government administration meeting 'reasonable requirements'. Designating 'who owns the Arctic’; sovereignty is a rule that establishes normative order by establishing political authority and rights to economic exploitation in specific spaces. The implications for Arctic sovereignty in the development of rules during the Cold War years include that the period was marked by several major transitions.
