ABSTRACT
The fourth International Polar Year took place from 2007 to 2009. The reason for the two-year span was to allow sufficient time to cover both the Arctic and the Antarctic during the most accessible seasons in those regions. In conjunction with this global event, Dag W. Aksnes and Dag Olav Hessen, in a study funded by the Research Council of Norway, explored the structure of, and recent developments in. polar research activities in the Nordic countries. The Nordic countries played an important role in the planning of the new IPY and hosted many specialized workshops. Greenland now also counted as an independent actor. All the Nordic countries have relatively little research output relating to the Antarctic in this period, but presumably this has increased somewhat for Norway and Sweden following the recent polar year. In this respect, Sweden's output has tended to exceed Norways, but Norway has played a stronger organizational role in the fourth IPY follow-up events.
