When 16th and 17th century European explorers sailed west in pursuit of a trade route to Asia, their search for a Northwest Passage was foiled by Arctic ice.
Five hundred years later, melting icecaps have set off a global race to control new shipping lanes over the North Pole. Just as the discoveries of Ferdinand Magellan and Vasco de Gama gave seafaring Portugal routes around Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, the opening of the Arctic, with its shortcut from the Atlantic to north-east Asia and its untapped oil reserves, can redraw the geopolitical map and create new power brokers.
When the US, Russia and six other stakeholders of the Arctic Council meet on Wednesday in the Swedish city of Kiruna, they'll be joined by nations with observer status, such as China and the European Union, which are angling for an elevated status in the club and greater say in the region's future.
New passages linking Asia to America and Europe will be as revolutionary as the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal, which boosted European trade with Asia by connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and shortening the journey for cargo vessels, said President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland, a member of the council.
In a visit to Washington last month, Grimsson said his core mission was to ''try to wake this town to the fact that the Arctic should be among the top priorities for the US foreign policy in the first half of the 21st century'' and no longer relegated to its ''backyard''.
Arctic ice is melting at an accelerating rate. Compared with the average measurements from 1980 to 2000, the area of ice covering the Arctic Ocean, a body of water roughly the size of Russia, had shrunk last year by half, the Arctic Institute found. The thickness of the remaining ice had dwindled by 80 per cent.
The Arctic Ocean may become a frigid slush of fresh and saltwater in the summer within three to five years, according to a White House estimate. An Arctic shipping route or easier access through the Northwest Passage, now open only to ice-breaking ships, would mean shorter and less expensive trips between north-eastern Asia and the US east coast and Europe.
Less ice also may mean easier access to oil and gas under the Arctic Ocean floor, resources the US Geological Survey estimates may be 30 per cent of the world's undiscovered natural gas reserves and 13 per cent of its undiscovered oil.
This week's conference comes amid signs greenhouse gases blamed for global warming are accumulating at rates mankind has never experienced. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported on May 10 that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million, a threshold not seen for 3 million years.
The countries that make up the Arctic Council - Russia, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, the US and Canada - will sign a treaty on oil-spill preparedness and response, discuss their agenda for the next two years and possibly vote on adding to the roster of permanent observers, which includes Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and Poland.
A vote on upgrading China's status would be tied to a larger ''question about whether the issues related to the Arctic will be handled by the countries in the region, or whether the Arctic - because of climate change, global economic potential - is a global issue,'' said Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington policy group.
The ministers also will discuss efforts to deal with the increases in maritime traffic and oil exploration, and to cope with the effect of melting ice on indigenous Arctic communities.
In preparation for the meeting, US President Barack Obama signed a new ''national strategy for the Arctic region'' that lists as its first priority advancing US interests - including the protection of energy interests, maintaining free passage through Arctic seas and building infrastructure.
During the Cold War, the Arctic was an arena of military competition between the US and the Soviet Union, said Ronald O'Rourke, the naval affairs specialist with the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
While the US lost interest, Russia remained combative and in 2001 was first to file a claim at the United Nations to extend its sea territory in the Arctic shelf. It drove the point home in 2007. In a stunt reminiscent of Spanish conquistadors, polar explorer Artur Chilingarov led a submarine expedition to the North Pole and planted a Russian flag on the seabed below the ice.
Under international law, no country owns the North Pole, and the five nations with Arctic coastlines - Russia, the US, Canada, Norway and Denmark - are limited to their 200-nautical-mile economic zones. The US is alone in not having ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which gives states 10 years from the date of ratification to extend their claims on the continental shelf. Gaining sovereignty to more land that's underwater will give them a jump-start when it comes to exploiting mineral-rich resources below the seabed.