Abstract
RECENT economic developments in the Siberian Arctic lands bear some testimony to Mr. V. Stefan -sson's contention of a ‘friendly arctic’. A paper in the Geographical Journal of April by Mr. H. P. Smolka describes some of the recent Soviet schemes on the Yenisei, Khatanga and other rivers, where a few years ago a little native fishing and hunting were the sole interests. Igarka, 600 miles up the Yenisei, and some distance north of the Arctic Circle, is now a city of 14,000 inhabitants with well-built timber houses and timber roads. There are schools, theatres and other amenities, and the whole town is flood-lit in winter. The one interest is timber, which is exported by the river in late summer. Work goes on all the year round, and the inhabitants rarely suffer from cold even with temperatures of 35° C. A modern port is being built. Norilsk, farther north than Igarka, is being built for new coal mines on the Pyasina River and is being connected by a 70-mile railway to its port of Dudinka, another new growth 400 miles up the Yenisei River. Nordvik, at the mouth of the Khatanga River, in nearly lat. 70° N., is an even more amazing growth. It was started last year as a town for the new salt mines. With these urban growths there are developing also experiments in arctic agriculture. In lat. 68° N., onions, radishes and cabbages have been grown in the open, and tomatoes, cucumbers and asparagus in hothouses. Experiments are being made in growing vegetables in electrically heated and lighted subterranean chambers, the current being provided by windmills.
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Development in the Arctic. Nature 139, 917–918 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139917d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139917d0