LICHEN: The Linguistic and Cultural Heritage Electronic Network

The Far North is not merely a physical and geographical location, but also a cultural environment in which all human activities take place. Therefore, the Linguistic and Cultural Heritage Electronic Network (LICHEN) project focuses on the languages and cu ltures of the northern circumpolar region. The Norwegian part of the LICHEN-project aims to collect, preserve and disseminate information about the Kven language which is a minority language spoken in Northern Norway, thus also enabling research on the Kv en language and culture. The LICHEN-project will create an electronic framework for the collection, management, online display, and exploitation of existing corpora of the languages of the northern circumpolar region, which is also applicable to other cor pora that represent other varieties of languages. The Norwegian part of the LICHEN-project will involve carrying out a pilot project on the Kven language. Kven got recognised as a language in 2005 and the Norwegian government has suggested that a linguist ic infrastructure for Kven is needed. This project will not only accumulate new scientific information, but also prepare the ground for the development of a dictionary, grammar and text books for the Kven language.