An ice-free Arctic is gradually emerging, and the northern Barents Sea is at the epicenter of this change. Home to Norway’s richest fisheries, sound sustainable management of the altering northern Barents Sea’s ecosystem and marine resources is an urgent societal need and a great scientific challenge.
 
The Nansen Legacy is the collective answer of the Norwegian research community to the outstanding changes witnessed in the Barents Sea and the Arctic as a whole. It is rooted in the recognition that the rapidly changing northern environment leads to questions of such importance to the society, as well as such intellectual, empirical and logistical complexity, that they can only be addressed properly through large-scale cooperation on national and international levels.
 
Hundred and twenty-five years after Fridtjof Nansen first started scientifically exploring the Arctic Ocean, ten major Norwegian research institutions are closing the ranks. They are sharing their resources, competence and infrastructure in an unprecedented endeavor to provide a cross-disciplinary scientific basis for long-term, holistic, and sustainable management of marine ecosystems and human presence in the northern Barents Sea and adjacent Arctic Ocean.