This is a collection of papers from a symposium organised in Argentina in 2003 to commemorate Otto Nordenskjöld's 1901 Swedish expedition. It followed on from an earlier symposium on the same theme held in 2001 in Göteborg, Sweden. The first meeting focussed entirely on the Swedish expedition, setting its activities in an historical context, examining the main actors in the expedition, considering its scientific legacy and finally discussing issues of scientific and polar geopolitics. This later meeting is much more diffuse in its aims, attempting to fill in gaps not treated in the earlier symposium and widening the scope to include a curious mixture of material divided into two parts - Natural History and Human Sciences. In the first section there are papers directly on aspects of the expedition science - fishes and botany - but also broader historical science reviews considering Swedish glaciological work in the Weddell Sea over the last century, an overview of all of Nordenskjöld's geological work in Antarctica, Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia, Argentine-Swedish co-operation in Quaternary geology and the work of all Nordic geologists in Argentina. As well as a review of modern data on fossil vertebrates from James Ross Basin (which is at least linked to the expedition through its discovery of the first fossil penguins and whales in Antarctica) there also two completely disconnected papers on current UV measurement and effects. In the second part of the volume we have six papers, comprising an introduction to the archaeology of the native tribes of Tierra del Fuego, a discussion of food for explorers, two papers examining Nordenskjöld's personal values, and two papers dealing with geopolitical implications in different ways.

Whilst the tenuous theme connecting all these contributions is Swedish-Argentine collaboration it is not enough to counter the disparate nature of the papers. It is neither a complete survey of all aspects of Swedish activities in Argentina over the past 100 years nor a set of key scientific papers on current topics, whilst the historical papers clearly suffer from being apart from the earlier review of the expedition and its activities.

This is not to say that many of the papers do not have interesting aspects to them. This may be the first time that anyone has reviewed the work of Nordic geologists in southern South America in English and the three papers by Rolleri, Lundqvist, and Hjort et al. provide an interesting insight into how much of their work provided an important basis for later studies by Argentine geologists. The paper by Menni & Lucifora on the fish collected by Einar Lőnnberg draws attention to the 20 new species he described, almost 16% of the Southern Ocean fish. The contribution from Jonsdottir on botany covers much of the ground in her earlier paper in the previous symposium. The brief summary of the expedition by Cioccale & Rabassa tells us little that is new but does provide a bibliography of papers and books published by the expedition personnel up to twenty years after they returned. Sadly this is seriously inadequate and misses out many important contributions including the personal accounts of J.G. Adersson and S.A. Duse. The most interesting papers are those by Elzinga “South Polar imaginations and geopolitical realities” and Lewander “To remember and restore the Argentine rescuers of the Nordenskjöld Expedition 1901–1903”. Elzinga's paper is both philosophical and cultural, examining how the Swedish expedition fitted into the ethos of scientific internationalism, how Nordenskjöld's personal Christian values provided a key part of his professional approach and how the expedition influenced major changes, in articular the development of Southern Ocean whaling. Lewander's paper is based on correspondence between the Argentine geologist J.M. Sobral and the Swedish professor Erik Ljungner and explores how Sobral was alienated by Swedish members of the expedition, despite his becoming fluent in Swedish and contributing significantly to the scientific work.

The book certainly contains some very interesting papers that complement to earlier volume but it would have been much better if it had been more tightly restricted to the historical expedition.