At the suggestion of his mentor Linnaeus, Swedish scientist An­ton Rolandsson Martin (1726-88 ) travelled as a passen­ger on a whaling voyage to the Arctic in 1758. This article examines brief­ly the achievements of Martin’s expedition and how it became esta­blished as the pioneering forerunner of Swedish scien­tific expe­ditions to the Arctic during the nineteenth century. Going on to describe these subsequent expeditions, which took place up to and including the early years of the twentieth century, the ex­tent to which Swedish scientific activity in the Arctic moved away from the scientific ideals of Martin’s and Linnaeus’s time to reflect other ambitions and international spheres of interest in the region is also examined. The historical ‘narra­tive’ that was latterly con­structed with regard to Swedish scientific activity in the Polar Re­gions over the course of one hundred and fifty years is also investi­gated, as well as the extent to which Martin’s expedi­tion was refer­enced and reverenced in retrospect.