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The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern FutureAll of AlaskaБЂ™s major settlements are either in low-elevation terrain, along the coast, or both. NorwayБЂ™s long-axis mountain spine crowded its settlements along its shores where grew societies of fishermen, explorers, and (now) offshore oil and gas drillers. Sweden, Finland, and northwestern Russia, in contrast, are low-elevation and permafrost-free. They have been widely settled since prehistory and their reindeer-herding, dairy, and cool-weather agricultural societies count among the oldest in Europe. Given all this, it took prospects of financial gain to attract nonnative settlers to remote northern areas. In the ninth century seafaring VikingsБЂ”ancestors of todayБЂ™s Norwegians, Swedes, and DanesБЂ”variously plundered or settled Russia, Greenland, Canada, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands. The (re)discovery of North America attracted French and British trappers and traders who penetrated across Canada in search of beaver. From Siberia came the call of sable fur. After defeating the Khan near modern-day TobolБЂ™sk, Russian Cossacks swept three thousand miles east from the Urals all the way to the Pacific Ocean in 1697, completing the Russian version of БЂњmanifest destinyБЂ«a full century and a half before the United States did ...» |
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