Following reconnaissance work in 1994, a group offour Norwegian and Russian geologists in the summerof 1995 started working in river sections alongSevernaya Dvina and Vaga in the Arkhangelsk regionof northwestern Russia. This was the initiation of theDanish Norwegian Russian Swedish ArkhangelskProject, which in the following years evolved from shipand vehicle-borne 6 8 person expeditions along Sever-naya Dvina (1996 and 1997) and the Mezen RiverBasin (1997 and 1998) to ship and helicopter-borneexpeditions along the coasts of the White and Barentsseas, the Chyoshskaya Bay and on the Timan Ridge(2000, 2001, 2002) (Fig. 1). The expeditions thereforegrew in size and complexity over the years, as did thegeology encountered in the field areas as we movedfrom areas influenced only by the Scandinavian IceSheet to areas influenced also by the Barents Sea andthe Kara Sea ice sheets. The present volume sum-marizes the work carried out during these eightsummers. Our work was an integral part of theQUEEN Project (Quaternary Environment of theEurasian North), a European Science Foundationproject comprising fieldwork in northern Russia andSiberia and the adjacent seas. Much has already beenpublished in the series of collective volumes from thisproject (Larsen et al. 1999; Thiede et al. 2001, 2004).For the waxing and waning of ice sheets in Eurasiaduring the last ice age, the Arkhangelsk region holds astrategic position as a triple junction, because it wasoverridden by all three major Eurasian ice sheets: theScandinavian, the Barents Sea and the Kara Sea icesheets. While the first was mainly land-based andflowing out from the Fennoscandian mountains, theother two formed on the coastal shelf and moved ontoland. They therefore represent very different types ofice sheet, and this is reflected in their dynamic responseto external forcing. The unravelling of these glacialevents, and its relation to sea level and climate, hasbeen the main focus of our work.The Quaternary history of this region was firstoutlined by Wollosovich (1900) and Ramsay (1904),then by Lavrova (1937). These works contain manyprimary observations that are still valid. Later, com-prehensive surveys by Devyatova & Loseva (1964) andby Devyatova (1982) functioned scientifically as a fieldguide on Severnaya Dvina and in the Mezen Basin.Also regional Quaternary maps compiled by Lavrov(1977, 1991) provided highly useful overviews andnarrowed our scope to critical field areas.Since 1995, members of our project have documen-ted and logged more than 110 localities along the riversand coasts and surveyed many more (Fig. 1).Ice sheet dynamics from field studies and modelsLarsen et al. (2006a) offer a synthesis of the complexglacial and glaciolacustrine history of northwesternRussia, shown for the period 135 to 15 kyr BP in aseries of palaeo-geographical maps. Regional overviewsare presented in Demidov et al. (2006) for theScandinavian Ice Sheet and in Kjaer et al. (2006) for aspecific area around the Kanin Peninsula and Chyoshs-kaya Bay. The reconstruction of a mega-scale thrust-fault complex illustrates the ice/bed interaction andallows a palaeoenvironmental model to be establishedfor the earliest part of the Weichselian (Larsen et al.2006b). Lambeck et al. (2006) use the field observa-tions from this and other regions, e.g. Taimyr, to modelrelative sea level and changing ice cover over Eurasia inthe period c. 150 to 60 kyr BP.Sea-level changeGrosfjeld et al. (2006) give a detailed history of LateSaalian and Eemian relative sea level along the PyozaRiver, and Jensen et al. (2006) describe a MiddleWeichselian transgression which took place duringmajor regional deglaciation of the whole area at thetransition from MIS 4 to 3. The relative sea-level andisostatic history for the Late Saalian to the earlyHolocene is synthesized in Larsen et al. (2006a) andmodelled by Lambeck et al. (2006). Kjaer et al. (2006)explore the wider implications of rapid sea levelchanges and their impact on shelf-ice stability.The Eemian interglacialMarine sediments from the Eemian are widespread andform an important and readily recognizable stratigra-phical marker. A multi-palaeontological study gives adetailed account of hydrographical change and inflowof Atlantic water (Grosfjeld et al. 2006).