The map machine: Salmon, Sámi, sand eels, sand, water and reindeer. Resource extraction in the High North and collateral landscapes

Abstract

As a collaborative production, the exhibition New Arctic aspired to explore postcolonial versions of the Arctic. For this purpose, the exhibition included, among others, an installation called a map machine, seeking to display the Arctic as a site of ongoing ontological politics. To our audiences, the map machine visualised how an inhabited Arctic continues to become a periphery, open to new resource exploitation, a Dreamland “out of space and time.” In this text, I mimic the work of this map machine by describing a series of outside interventions on the Varanger Peninsula, in the Sámi core areas of Norway. The case that initiates the set of actions described in this text is a proposed expansion of a quartzite mine in the small village of Austertana. I illustrate how maps and bureaucratic processes as working political technologies introduce new cartographic visions of this land–water interface, counteracting other existing versions of the same landscape. The case illustrates how exactly such new visions impose urgently meaningful single-action landscapes, or how the Tanafjord was literally reworked from a landscape of endangered species to a landscape defined by an issue of maritime security.

Fishy windows to an Arctic city: Urban (in)visibilities of global fisheries in Tromsø

“…The previous image of Tromsø as a starting point for polar explorations and whale and seal hunting is connected with the persistent historical and colonial legacies in which the “Arctic” is imagined as an extraordinary space to be explored (Körber, MacKenzie, & Stenport, 2017; Ween, 2020; Hanaček et al, 2022). This image seems to partly frame and justify the organisation of modern-day fisheries in Tromsø.…”

Beyond Mining

“…2 In this perspective, distance becomes a colonizing effect, solidified in various practices of appropriation that together effectively orchestrate distance as a feature of the Arctic. 3 For Polar explorers, Arctic remoteness is a logistical challenge and an obstacle to conquer; for artists and naturalists, it is a romantic feature of its attraction (Ween, 2020). But the consistent pattern of remoteness as a geopolitical effect teaches us that distance is part of a broader re-contextualization of a place, through which the power of definition is shifted from the insider's perspective to the outsider's gaze (Lien, 2003).…”

Interruptions: Affective futures and uncanny presences atGiemaš, Finnmark

“…The operations will require a dredging to make the sound deeper, in order to secure future marine transport. The sound marks the boundary of the Tana/ Deatnu river mouth Nature Reserve, a delta- and wetland area that provides a resting and feeding area for numerous migrating birds, as well as a breeding area for seal, and one of Norway’s Ramsar-protected wetland sites designated to be of international importance through the UNESCO Ramsar convention, but also the near one of Norway’s most famous and protected salmon rivers, Tana river/ Deatnu (see Ween, 2020).…”

“…And he adds that the Norwegian state has promised to subsidise a dredging operation to improve the shipping canal. This is yet another environmental hazard, and might affect the salmon smolt, the trout and the local seal, as well as sandeel that the smolt feed upon (for details, see Ween, 2020).…”