Arctic marine sediments turned out to ideal recorders of geomagnetic field variations such as short reversal excursions (Fig. 1; key publ.). Therefore, cores from the Svalbard region of the Arctic Ocean were chosen again for a further detailed analysis. The main objective of this project is to reveal the geomagnetic field behavior of excursions during the last about 100 ka with high temporal resolution based on magnetostratigraphic investigation of selected arctic marine sediment cores. High-quality directional and relative paleointensity data from different high-latitude sites shall contribute detailed full-vectorial information about the behavior of the geodynamo in space and time. Detailed rock magnetic as well as accompanying sedimentological and geochemical studies shall be performed in order to validate the quality of the obtained records. In addition, numerous absolute ages shall be derived with the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C method in order to provide a detailed age model of the investigated sediments.