Arctic Silk Road: Imagining Global Infrastructures and Community Boundaries in Sápmi and the Russian North

The "Arctic Silk Road" project follows the social and material lives of global infrastructures across time and space. The "Silk Road" in the Arctic refers to an infrastructure network meant to facilitate the flow of goods between northeast China and markets in Europe through a northern sea route and melting sea ice. It features plans for an Arctic railway traversing the transnational Indigenous Sámi homeland (Sápmi) from Rovaniemi in Finland to the major shipping port of Kirkenes in Norway, and the build up of Arctic sea port and railway infrastructure along Norwegian, Russian, and Circumpolar coasts. International preparations have fostered local uncertainty and collective mobilization against the plans through art and new alliances along the envisioned routes. This is weaving new relations between Sámi communities practicing subsistence and duodji lifeways, residents of precarious northern industrial centers, state governments, and international organizations. At the same time, it has raised memories of past industrial developments to bear on the present moment--the effects of state incursions on self-sufficiency and local production. Through a material lens, the project 1) compares competing visions of the Arctic Silk Road along its anticipated routes, and 2) investigates how infrastructures in these regions have shaped social and territorial relations through time. Through collaboration with local communities, artisans, and museum curators, project findings will contribute to ongoing discussion of infrastructural impacts and self-determination in Sápmi. The project has involved fieldwork on infrastructures of the Arctic Silk Road in Sápmi (Norway and Finland), as well as comparative sites along the global route. We are publishing several articles in relation to this research, as well as organizing an edited volume with comparative cases from Sápmi, Russia, and around the world, titled Arctic Silk Roads: An Anthropology of the Unbuilt. We have also launched a podcast on colonial and Sámi infrastructures, and begun a public and community facing project led by a duojár (Sámi craft maker) to visualize infrastructural networks past, present, and future through the making of Sámi duodji. We have held two project conferences: a conference on the project's theoretical focus of disruptive infrastructures and materials, and the other a workshop for the Arctic Silk Road edited volume. In addition, project members have presented the research at Arctic and international conferences, and invited academic talks.

The melting of Arctic sea ice has opened new opportunities for what has been popularly termed the "Arctic Silk Road," an infrastructural endeavor that seeks to connect northeast China to markets in Europe through a northern sea route. This features plans for the Arctic Railway traversing the transnational Indigenous Sámi homeland (Sápmi) from Rovaniemi in Finland to the major shipping port of Kirkenes in Norway. Logistical preparations have fostered uncertainty and collective mobilizations along the envisioned route--weaving new relations between Skolt, Inari, and North Sámi concerned about land-based livelihoods, residents of precarious northern industrial centers seeking job opportunities, and state governments. Through study of these interrelations, the Arctic Silk Road project seeks to answer the central question: How do people build communities through the anticipation of infrastructures, and how does this occur through material and linguistic expressions of community belonging that transform across space and time? This project features multiple levels of comparative study: First, it involves multi-sited comparison of community expressions along the envisioned routes of the Arctic Silk Road--from China to a variety of locations across the Circumpolar North, including Norway, Finland, and Russia. Second, it investigates how infrastructures have shaped material expressions of community identity through time, from Medieval exchange networks, 17th century mines, and post-Second World War roads that shaped Sámi and Nordic cultural distinction with traded silver and cloth, to contemporary fluorescence of regional art and dress in mobilizations against new forms of state incursion. Project findings will be used to inform political decision-making on sustainable infrastructure that encourages economic opportunities while considering environmental and cultural impacts.