Some 30 years ago the regional aspects of the plate tectonic history of the Norwegian-Greenland Sea and the eastern Arctic Ocean were unravelled and showed that these ocean basins had opened in early Eocene, 55-56 Ma ago. Drilling by Glomar Challenger in the Norwegian-Greenland Sea during Leg 38 of the Deep Sea Drilling Project confirmed the plate tectonic model and established a marine biostratigraphy framework for the region. The leg set the stage for three subsequent Ocean Drilling Program legs of thematically oriented drilling by the Joides Resolution. Leg 104 drilled a deep acoustic basement hole on the Voring Plateau, which has become a legacy hole for volcanic margin studies, and provided new key information on the Northern Hemisphere Glaciation and the history of the Norwegian Current. Legs 151 and 162 addressed North Atlantic-Arctic gateways problems. During Leg 151 the Joides Resolution succeeded, with icebreaker support, in reaching the ice-free waters north of Svalbard, thus for the first time bri