The Arctic is a truly unique world--like the Antarctic, a veritable continent in itself--sharply separated from the more southern regions with their much milder climate. The polar regions offer the most extraordinary conditions for all living beings, the extreme limits for the sustenance of life of both man and animals. Hunger must be faced, and death may well be met at the least deviation from the normal, for there is no surplus to insure survival in the barren snowy surroundings. Still, the polar regions are inhabited by a great number of plants and animals, which in many special ways are adapted to the peculiar conditions of the Arctic; and even hardy human beings, the Eskimo tribes, have been able to make life endurable there, living off the barren land. The Arctic Year will try to give an impression of how man, beasts and plants exist under arctic conditions, from January through spring, summer and autumn, and on into the new long winter of cold and darkness that is an arctic December. Of course you know something of the Arctic. You have heard about the snow and ice, about the hardships endured by arctic explorers, and you may even have listened to or read the narratives of one of the oldtimers of the polar world. Bud did you ever ask him: What really is the Arctic? Surely he would hesitate over the answer, because this simple question is not so easy as it sounds, and indeed you must not expect any straightforward definition. The boundary of the polar regions must be defined so that it coincides with the occurence of the chief features of arctic nature. However, most of the phenomena that characterize the Arctic have different boundaries with the souther, temperate regions.