ABSTRACT
As was mentioned above, in the beginning of the 19th century most of the Arctic as
defined here could be considered as an international area not subjected to any state
sovereignty. By the middle of the twentieth century, all land space was already firmly
under the territorial sovereignty of the Arctic states, and it was thus mainly the Arctic
Ocean and other Arctic waters, as well as the international air space, whose status remained international. After World War Two, however, the status of the Greenland,
Barents, and Norwegian Seas in particular as parts of the high seas was much
diminished by expanding coastal state jurisdictional spaces. It is thus essentially the core o f the Arctic Ocean whose status can still be regarded as ’purely’ international if
the normal principles of the law of the sea are applied.
