Epilogue: The End of the Arctic? Crisis, War and the Changing Landscape of Arctic Research

The epilogue discusses the contemporary crisis in Arctic research. Recent events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, and their repercussions for the region, have posed unprecedented challenges to cooperation in the Arctic. As things stand, international sanctions have frozen all cooperation with Russia. The present state of affairs could be construed as the most severe conflict affecting state-led Arctic cooperation in its 30-year history, but also as a turning point in the way we understand the Arctic as a state-oriented, totalized entity. For better or for worse, it gives us an opportunity to rethink the Arctic. Indeed, we are being forced to re-evaluate what we perceive as “international” in the Arctic. Critically oriented scholarship could contribute to studying what are multiple Arctics, and to find the questions that research needs to ask today.