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ity, Mary asked Outi for another progress report. She also requested confirmation that the
Circumpolar Universities Association would present the working group report to the Arc-
tic Council and would welcome some form of endorsement of the initiative by the coun-
cil ministers. All went well, and at a preparatory meeting in London (UK), I drafted lan-
guage for the Arctic Council conference declaration concerning the creation of the uni-
versity. The Arctic Council meeting took place from 14 to 16 September 1998 in Iqaluit.
The report “With Shared Voices: Launching the University of the Arctic” was presented
by Oran Young on behalf of the Circumpolar Universities Association. It was so well re-
ceived that Oran and I were able to strengthen the text for the ministerial declaration. It
finally read: We “welcome, and are pleased to announce, the establishment of a University
of the Arctic, a university without walls, as proposed by a working group of the Circum-
polar Universities Association. We note the kind offer of Finland to support the interim
secretariat. We encourage the working group to continue its efforts to consult with northern
educational and indigenous authorities and colleges. We look forward to further reports on
this issue and to seeking ways to promote the success of this initiative”. It was language we
knew could be built on at subsequent ministerial meetings of the Arctic Council.
After the Iqaluit Ministerial Conference, I ceased to play any role in the development
of the university, but I managed to arrange for support from my budget to assist with design
of one of the first concrete deliverables: the curriculum for the bachelor of circumpolar
studies. This was led by Aron Senkpiel and Sally Ross. An Interim Council of Universities
and Colleges of Higher Education that wished to join the University of the Arctic was es-
tablished, and in June 2001, the university was formally launched in Rovaniemi, Finland.
At that time, there were 33 member institutions. Today, there are 157. The university has
truly flourished and provided a new generation of graduates with a breadth of education
and experience that would have been quite impossible to acquire from any single organ-
isation. It is all the more remarkable because universities are normally competitive organ-
isations. Asgeir Brekke, Bill Heal, Sally Ross, the late Aron Senkpiel, Outi Snellman and
their colleagues should feel immensely proud of the foundation they built in the late 1990s.
It could serve as a case study on what can be achieved when a group of individuals with a
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