How a glacier, a fjord, and a mistake became a diplomatic crisis

What Heilprin Land reveals about science, sovereignty, and the making of Greenland — and why those forces still shape Arctic power politics today.

A map from My Arctic Journal: A Year Among Ice-Fields and Eskimos, first published in 1894, by Josephine Diebitsch Peary. (The Science Diplomat)

Part 1 of a five-part series on science diplomacy and sovereignty in the Arctic.

INTRODUCTION: On a clear Arctic day, Heilprin Land looks less like territory than memory: a high, wind-scoured plateau where rust-c…