ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the nature of polar cooperation in the Nordic region from around 1945 to 1949. Denmarks decision to pursue a national research programme in Greenland was a rebuff to potential partners such as Ahlmann, reflecting not so much the antagonistic relations between Norway and Denmark from before 1939 but the long shadow of the United States, which now loomed over Denmarks colony. Danish and Norwegian Arctic relations during the 1930s were defined by the enduring conflict over East Greenland. The Norwegian state pursued a platonic agenda in the south even as it embraced an activist line in the north, largely because it felt there was very little to be gained through territorial annexations that might risk upsetting Britain. Although his thoughts had initially been of Graham Land probably influenced by Anderssons personal sense of unfinished business there Dronning Maud Land was easier to justify on both political and scientific grounds the latter thanks to the German photographs.
