Arctic Modernities

Since the late nineteenth century the circumpolar Arctic has undergone a process by which it has become incorporated in global modernity via natural science, technology, tourism and international politics. However, little research has so far been done on the impact of modernisation/modernity on the Arctic as a cultural formation. In particular, we lack knowledge about how a previous history of heroic Arctic images - whether such images are affirmed, contested or repudiated - has shaped, influenced and inf ormed modern discourses of the Arctic. This project will investigate aspects of Arctic modernity in its rich cultural and literary dimensions. It will concentrate on three nodal points that are often interlinked within discourses of Arctic modernity: gend er, indigeneity and ecology. Gender is key to our understanding of the history of modernisation processes in the Arctic, while indigeneity and ecology are inextricably linked in discourses of Arctic modernity that respond to the complexities and risks of Arctic development - locally as well as globally. All three nodal points enable a focus on the grey zones ignored in much present-day decision making about the Arctic. The potential for exposure of underlying attitudes will be exemplified in studies of ma terial encompassing a wide spectrum of textual genres, from media debates, documentation, travel writing, guidebooks and memoirs on the one hand, to fiction and poetry on the other. The geographical span of the material is equally wide. In addition to rep resentations of specific geographical locations across the transnational circumpolar area, the project covers the generalised North of travel writing and fantasy (as in utopian fictions of the North Pole). The perspectives on the Arctic in the selected ma terial are both external/touristic, as exemplified by fantasy literature, travel writing, expedition narratives and sociological reports, and internal/indigenous, based on residency and intimate local knowledges.