The polar regions have been fascinating explorers, researchers and scientists for centuries. Also our technological capacities advanced considerably since the early days, the challenges for direct observations in the polar regions remain: cold, dark, stormy, far. The main thing which changed, however, is the urgency with which we have to understand the processes happening in the polar regions and how the compartments of the Earth system are interlinked: the polar regios are hotspots of climate change. This talk is the first in a series of two to shed light on present day approaches to successful research: global multidisciplinary collaboration. It focuses on the Arctic and puts the current research in historical as well as global context.