Arctic Winter Games

The Arctic Winter Games are a biennial sporting tournament intended to promote cultural exchange, community pride, and athletic competition between circumpolar peoples. These games were established with the goal of providing athletes from cultures around the Arctic Circle with the opportunity to compete in local conditions. Athletes from several different countries and territories have competed in the Arctic Winter Games. In addition to sporting competition, each biennial event includes a cultural component that has grown to include concerts, film festivals, and exhibitions.

The 2016 games in Nuuk, Greenland, saw two thousand athletes compete in fifteen sports categories ranging from alpine skiing, snowboarding, and biathlon to more regional entries such as traditional Dene and Inuit sports. The Nuuk games featured assistance from more than five hundred volunteers. First, second, and third place finishers in each sporting class were presented with a medallion in the shape of an ulu (a type of traditional Inuit knife) in gold, silver, and bronze.

Brief History

The history of the Arctic Winter Games dates back to 1967 when a team of competitors from Yukon found themselves greatly outmatched at the first Canada Winter Games. Cal Miller, an advisor to the Yukon team, decided to create a new series of competitions that would allow regional athletes, many of them from indigenous tribes of the circumpolar north, the opportunity to compete on a more level playing field. He found that other regional sporting commissioners shared his frustration with the inability of athletes from their often sparsely populated regions to display their abilities.

Sporting commissioners from the Canadian territories of the Yukon and Northwest Territories joined with the Alaskan governor in 1969 to propose a regional alternative to the larger sporting competitions. They outlined a series of athletic events in which competitors of similar ability and training might highlight their skills in more competitive environments. They also wanted to promote greater cooperation and exchange between the various isolated cultures of the world's northern territories. These leaders established an independent nongovernmental organization to organize and run the competition. Called the Arctic Winter Games Corporation, it was given the mandate of choosing host cities and organizing the biennial competitions.

The first Arctic Winter Games were held in the city of Yellowknife in March 1970. They were held in conjunction with the Northwest Territory's centennial celebration. Athletes from the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Alaska competed in this first incarnation of the games. It was financed through shared contributions from each of the three regional governments, corporate donations, and a grant from Canada's Department of National Health and Welfare. These initial games featured more than seven hundred athletes competing in ten sporting events, including such traditional winter events as cross-country skiing, figure skating, and ice hockey. However, organizers also established competitions in popular non-seasonal events such as table tennis, volleyball, basketball, and boxing. The games had popular support in Yellowknife.

Between 1972 and 1984, the games alternated between the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Alaska as hosts. In 1976, northern Quebec participated as host but did not participate in the next several competitions. By 1988, enthusiasm for the Arctic Winter Games was on the decline. Organizers discovered that there was limited interest in hosting the games and declining levels of corresponding coverage and interest. As the games kept alternating between the same cities, organizers cited problems with volunteer burnout and a lack of corporate sponsorship. They sought to increase enthusiasm and competition by including other regional governments.

As part of these efforts, the organizers agreed to introduce several sports unique to the circumpolar region to the games. In 1990, two new categories of events were added to the schedule: Arctic Games, which encompassed a variety of Inuit sports played in Canada, Alaska, and Greenland; and Dene Games, which are native to the aboriginal Dene peoples of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The 1990 games saw the entrance of native athletes from Greenland and Magadan, Russia. This expansion of sporting events and geographical representation led to increased coverage from a number of media outlets, including CNN and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

In 1992, to reflect greater international participation, the organizing committee's name was changed from the Arctic Winter Games Corporation to the Arctic Winter Games International Committee. Throughout the 1990s, several other regional teams began participating in the Arctic Winter Games, including Tyumen and Chukotka, Russia. Over the course of the next decade, several other important changes were borne out. These included the move to a youth-oriented emphasis and increased coverage of the events on CBC beginning in 2000. The Sami people of the northern Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, and Finland and the aboriginal peoples of Yamal, Russia, became participants for the 2004 games.

By this point, the Arctic Winter Games had become a financially profitable event for many host cities. More recent events like that in Nuuk have seen a dramatic increase in both corporate interest and financial investment. While the first games in Yellowknife had an operating budget of less than a half million dollars, the 2023 games in Wood Buffalo, Alberta, Canada, cost more than $13 million. However, after this enormous expense, and because the games were played in consecutive years, the 2024 games held in Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska, cost less at $11 million.

Overview

By 2025, the Arctic Winter Games had been contested twenty-seven times. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the games were cancelled in 2020 and were then played consecutively in 2023 and 2024. The games are primarily oriented toward providing a more level athletic forum for Aboriginal and Indigenous athletes from a variety of circumpolar cultures, although athletes of any background are welcome. Like the Olympic Games, the Arctic Winter Games incorporate a ceremonial torch and opening ceremonies; however, they are differentiated by the inclusion of several aboriginal sports, cultural exhibitions, and native dancing.

Some of the Dene sports include the finger pull, snow snake, and pole push. The origins of each sport can be traced back to a specific hunting or life skill that these sports helped foster. The finger pull is a form of wrestling centered on the middle finger; the snow snake is similar to the javelin throw, except participants use a sidearm motion; and the pole push is like the tug of war, except teams seek to push each other out of a ring with a large log.

Included among the Inuit Arctic sports are three different high kick events, the kneel jump, the head pull, and the knuckle hop. The kneel jump requires an athlete to jump from a kneeling position, while the head pull—one of the most popular spectator sports—pits two wrestlers against each other via a leather ring placed around both heads. In the knuckle hop, competitors hop along the floor using only their toes and knuckles.

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