There are a lot of words and traits which describe the human species. A great deal of philosophy has been put towards trying to pin it down on any one thing: good or evil, strong or weak, and any other number of things. While it is not in our place to litigate the matter, there is one descriptor which is almost universally agreed upon: tenacity. Humanity as a group is almost abnormally determined to see its goals through, and the primary means by which this is made apparent is the way that humans have sought to expand to every habitable scrap of land on Earth. And when habitable land is unavailable, they will find a way to inhabit the uninhabitable. For many years a number of groups were known to meet this category, among them the people of tall mountain ranges and the high Arctic, carving out lives and cultures in areas that were so far removed from what was considered "livable" that it stretched belief. And yet there was one culture, encountered late into Europe's imperialist expansion, that brought it to a new extreme.
Bellingshausen was a naval man through and through, and having already served in the first Russian circumnavigation of the world was a natural choice to lead Russia's expedition to the Antarctic. The supposed "Terra Australis Incognita" had still not manifested, and while some had written off the southern icefields as being impossible to find land in, Russia was willing to give it another try. And indeed, land was found. What was dubbed Antarctica was formally discovered and located on the expedition's first pass by the continent, but it was the second pass that would prove far more productive. As the expedition passed what was named Peter I Island, it was thought that small canoes of an unfamiliar build were spotted abandoned on the shore, and the matter remained uncertain until 7 days later, when more of the same boats were spotted along with what appeared to be abandoned tents. The whole thing was deeply exciting for the Russians, and culminated on the 24th of January 1821, what is forever remembered in Antarctica as "First Contact Day".
The Russians dubbed them the "Antithuleans", though they themselves use the name Roodaab . Of all places it was poorly imagined that there would be humans here, living at the very tip of the Dormuth Peninsula in numbers great enough that it was obvious they were not accidental transplants, relatives of the Selk'nam perhaps who had been blown far afield. No, these were a people who were so knowledgeable of both their land and how to live there that it was obvious they were natives. It was a great tragedy that there was only one scientist aboard, one Ivan Mikhailovich Simonov, but he was so entranced by the sheer idea of what they'd found that he threw himself fully into a study of the Roodaab. The expedition turned away from its planned course to make harbor at the island of Ngektheezh, and taken in canoes to the greater bulk of Roodaab settlement along the mainland. For almost three weeks, the Russians were hosted by the Roodaab, leading many in the rest of the world to assume they had been lost until they finally reached Rio de Janiero greatly behind schedule.
And so began two hundred years of research and study into the Roodaab that continues to this day, driven by equal parts fascination and confusion. Studies of the culture, language, and even genetics have been somewhat unhelpful in properly ascribing the Roodaab arrival to what is named Anvar to more than a generalized part of human history. Among other things, the Roodaab show evidence of having lived in Anvar for nearly 10,000 years, which means that there have been humans in Antarctica for millennia longer than places like Madagascar, Iceland, Hawaii, New Zealand, and other areas that would be roundly considered far easier to settle. Genetic studies have shown the Roodaab to be among the first wave of humans who settled the Americas, and although seemingly unrelated in fact proved to be a major point in favor of early settlement by sea rather than passing into North and South America by land when sites like Valdivia were taken into account.
Beyond that the story is a lot fuzzier. 10,000 years ago the world was even colder than it is now, and what possessed the Roodaab to turn south remains unknown. It's also proven nearly impossible to associate their culture with any other American culture, alongside their language unhelpfully being a language isolate wholly unrelated to any other on Earth. In fact the only people which they bear any resemblance to are the Inuit of the far northern polar regions, but of course it's difficult to imagine that the two would have any direct relationship and that their cultural similarities emerge as a result of the similarities in the environments they inhabit. For a time it was in fact assumed that the Roodaab were "Southern Eskimo", and for some it was used to support the idea of the Hollow Earth theory on the basis that they were "intrusions" of cultures inside the Earth having moved out through supposed passages at the north and south poles. This idea has long been debunked, but it isn't helped by the ideas the Roodaab have of their own place in the world.
Obviously the Roodaab embrace the ideas of the modern world: Earth is round, it orbits the sun, the universe is vast, and so on. But the cultural mythos of the Roodaab is far different. In their own description, humans originated at the South Pole (lodor, "world-center") and spread outwards, traveling north along the Antarctic Peninsula (dormuth, "world-spine"). The land once extended further to the north, and this was used to travel to lands far beyond which are now lost when the land pulled back. The land of their making (Zaar, the name for Antarctica) was terrible, and so most humans left before the lands beyond was lost to them. These people were those who had been delayed and were late in attempting to leave, and these people are the modern day Roodaab (a name which literally means "the late people"). The people then despaired, but it was then a man named Umgookh declared that they would defy the gods and live in this inhospitable land, for they were greater than those who had made them.
This story was widely believed to be nothing more than a story for many years. After all humans originated in Africa, not the South Pole, and settlement would have come to Antarctica rather than from it. However, when taken into account with archaeological and anthropological studies, it is now believed there is some element of the Roodaab arrival to the region buried in it. Notably the idea of "lands which once extended north but which are now lost to flood" is one that fits with the global presence of a flood mythos, but also seems to describe the likely way which the Roodaab arrived. In the Roodaab language (Gabzur, literally "loud thought"), there are two words for "land": gizog and zhimog, which translate as "cold land" (ice sheets) and warm land (actual rocky land). And in the story, the word used to describe the lost lands is gizog, leading to the idea that the original settlers of Anvar did so by traveling across sheets of sea ice that have melted in the time since the Last Glacial Maximum, which does correlate with the rough time frame of human settlement of the Americas.
In fact there are a number of features of Roodaab names and stories that seem to provide for greater understanding of the region if paid attention to. In one of the most notable instances, Europeans made regular stopovers at what the Roodaab named Viinmuul, literally "False Safety", and which they avoided. This was believed to be superstition for years and the island was a regular stopover for whalers and sealers during the Antarctic Summer. That was, until 1842, when the island's main mountain (Riphin, "Quiet Anger") erupted. As it turned out, Viinmuul is in fact the caldera of a much larger shield volcano, and one which is still active to this day, giving reason for why it had such toponyms and why the Roodaab chose to avoid it. Another notable instance is Kaatpiph Island (Nightmare Island, literally "night fear"). Such a fearful name would suggest avoidance, yet the Roodaab regularly said that the nightmare wasn't the island itself, but what could be found on it. Such a legend prompted a great many expeditions to try and find this supposed "nightmare", but the island seemed wholly normal in the context of other Antarctic islands up until 1974, when an expedition made a groundbreaking discovery: bones. Specifically, dinosaur bones.
The discovery of dinosaur bones on the island was not only a major discovery for the history of ancient life in Antarctica, once part of Gondwana like Africa and South America, but was also validation of the myth which had given rise to the island's name. This among other things has only made the exploration of Roodaab culture that much more interesting, as while there are names which seem to literally describe features and characteristics of their lands there are other names that are either proven to be euphemistic (for example Phuungoz, "whale bones", to describe an island chain) or more literal in description (example: Zuuv'mak meaning "struggle prize" to describe a hard-to-reach group of islands). Really, the selected instances of more "descriptive" names are sometimes exaggerated in their importance, given that other similar naming conventions are found in almost every culture on the planet. As with anything, the Roodaab are sometimes subjected to a degree of exotification, especially given how difficult it is to actually meet them, the unusual circumstances that surround their existence, and the harsh climate that they live in which drives fascination with their culture in ways that aren't always entirely healthy.
And their unusual circumstances further underscore the unusual nature of their nationhood. Although they could be considered to be a post-colonial nation in the sense of being a nation of the (literal) global south that lives in the shadow of the developed nations of Europe and North America, the Roodaab were never formally colonized as other people were. There were certainly efforts, among them many efforts by Christian missionaries of all denominations, to bring them into the European sphere of influence, but all the way through the Second World War despite claims and assertions of ownership by nations like the United Kingdom, Chile, and Argentina over ownership of Anvar, none were ever able to fully prosecute them. In this way the Roodaab were "privileged" in a way, but as the rest of the world entered the 1950s amid concerns over maintaining peace and stability in the face of a possible war between the United States and Soviet Union, the newly-formed United Nations drafted the creation of the Antarctic Treaty, which among its other provisions labeled the continent as the "Common Heritage of Mankind" and held all national claims to the continent, even those which had persisted for centuries, in abeyance.
The Roodaab were not terribly pleased by the idea, not least for the fact that the United Nations was effectively arguing that they had no right to their own lands. Naturally, exemptions would have to be made. By this time the Roodaab had steadily begun to adopt more of the typical "features" of settled society, making use of the advancements in technology to build up permanent settlements and steadily abandon their typical nomadic lifestyle. Even with this, though, there was little of a traditional "economy" as far as they were concerned, but economics were no prerequisite for nationhood. With the Antarctic Treaty formalizing an exception to the territorial claims of the Roodaab, the Republic of Anvar was formally brought into being in 1960, the only nation with a formally recognized claim and territorial possession on Antarctica. Chile, Argentina, and Britain have all likewise adjusted their claims to recognize Anvar's sovereignty, but even if the country maintains a formal set of boundaries a "spiritual" dispute remains in place over the fact that even if the Roodaab have historically inhabited only a small part of the continent, they more than anyone have the greatest "claim" to ownership of the entire continent, and indeed some have argued that Anvar should formally extend over the entire continent and its "custodianship" placed in the hands of the Roodaab.
Whatever the case, the country stands alongside Vatican City and the Knights of Malta as one of the most unconventional "nations" in the world, even if it still maintains many of the more traditional "elements" of nationhood. And even many of its less traditional elements are not unusual: it has a population of only 14,000 which makes it the second least populous nation on Earth, but not the least populous national entity when things like British Overseas Territories are considered. Some 8,000 of its population is still semi-nomadic, which is a trait it shares with Mongolia (a nation where 30% of the population is nomadic). It has almost no infrastructure outside of its major cities, which is a trait shared with Canada's own Arctic territories. Really, the only thing truly "unusual" about the nature of Anvar is the way that all of these traits coexist within the same nation, not that the Roodaab themselves particularly care. They have their nation, and so long as they are able to maintain that nation they like everyone else who clings to the idea of nationhood in the modern age are satisfied. Everything else is secondary, they could have put a monarchy in place or created a deliberately anarchic society and it would make little difference towards this end.
Since the formal creation of Anvar, the country has steadily developed its own unique kind of economy based primarily on tourism and scientific research. N'gatneel maintains a dominance as the main entrepot of Antarctica, as well as its largest city with a population of 2,000 people. Most economic activity revolves around either the research bases or the movement of people to and from the continent for the purposes of accessing other bases deeper into the interior of the continent, and if not that then around the rise of Antarctic cruises and adventure tourists seeking to travel to the most extreme places on Earth, where entire towns have structured themselves around catering to tourists that seek "Anvarian Hospitality", which is more than a little patronizing but for most Roodaab if it brings money to the country then so be it. After all, if people are going to treat you like exotic window-dressing for their vacation to the bottom of the world, you might as well earn something from it. It works well enough for the Sherpas, after all.
Embracing this kind of reality doesn't exempt the Roodaab from being acutely aware of the dangers they face from the rest of the world. Because among all nations, Anvar alone is probably the most vulnerable to the ongoing effects of climate change, most acutely demonstrated by the disintegration of the Larsen Ice Shelf starting in the 1990s and continuing on through the ongoing collapse of its remnant sections in the years since. Indeed, Antarctica is among the fastest-warming regions of the world as a result of anthropogenic effects, and while this would in theory be good for the Roodaab it has been widely decried as an existential threat to their entire culture, less akin to the threat of Polynesian islands being drowned and more for an ecosystem collapse that would destroy the ability of the Roodaab to engage in their traditional culture, one which was almost wholly isolated from the world for thousands of years and which is now under threat of extirpation through the action of other nations.
Even if Anvar cannot be said to have suffered during the actual process of colonialism, it still shares the fact that it stands to suffer at the hands of foreign nations. Anvar is small and underpopulated, and has almost no capacity to try and pressure foreign nations into changing on their behalf any more than a tiny nation like Tuvalu or Nauru could. Worse still, the Antarctic Treaty goes up for review in 2048, at which point the entire legal underpinning of Antarctica potentially falls apart and Anvar itself comes under threat by the will of larger nations to simply declare their claims to Antarctica and override Anvar's sovereignty. The Roodaab even have a word for it: Ruurag, "slow death". In an anxious world, Anvar has more reason to be fearful than most, not least because the source of those anxieties is out of their control. Normally one might not worry about things they can't control, but when they're an existential threat to one's existence, you could be forgiven for worrying endlessly about them.
