Арктика және Антарктика медальдерінің тарихы

UK award
the British medal

The first medal was awarded in 1857, named the Arctic Medal. The Admiralty issued the medal for several expeditions, including the expedition to discover the fate of Sir John Franklin and his crew, who were lost while looking for the Northwest Passage in 1847:

Her Majesty having been graciously pleased to signify her commands that a Medal be granted to all persons, of every rank and class, who have been engaged in the several Expeditions to the Arctic Regions, whether of discovery or search, between the years 1818 and 1855, both inclusive. The second presentation of the Arctic Medal was to the crews of three ships exploring the Arctic in 1875–76.

The medal is octagonal in shape with a white ribbon. The reverse of the original Arctic Medal showed a three masted ship surrounded by ice floes. The obverse bears a portrait of the reigning monarch. It is accompanied by a clasp that is placed on the ribbon of the medal in order to signify which region or regions service was completed. In 2024 Captain Victoria Auld was the first women to receive a clasp. Frank Wild and Ernest Joyce hold the joint record of four clasps on their Polar Medal.

The Government of Australia replaced the Polar Medal with its own Australian Antarctic Medal in 1987.

The medal was awarded to members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ship St. Roch, who patrolled extensively in the western Arctic (1940) and completed a west to east passage of the Arctic in 1942. Although several Canadians had received this medal, it was not included in the Canadian Honours System that was promulgated in 1967. Subsequently, a Canadian decoration intended to honour explorers of Canada's polar regions and defenders of the country's sovereignty in the north was initially conceived by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson as the Governor General's Northern Medal and created on 15 September 2005, to award those who serve with distinction in northern Canada. It was replaced on 23 June 2015 by Canada's own Polar Medal.

In 1996, when New Zealand revised its royal honours system, New Zealanders ceased to receive the Polar Medal. It was proposed that the medal would be preserved, with a new name, under New Zealand regulations: the New Zealand Antarctic Medal. The rationale for the renaming was that it is in relation to Antarctica that New Zealand's endeavours and achievements have been made. The report on honours that recommended the change contained the inaccurate claim that the medal was named after the North Pole. The new medal was formally instituted by the queen on 1 September 2006.