Dag Avango

Assessing Arctic futures: voices, resources and governance

Interest in the future of the Arctic is running high, motivated in large part by belief that climate change will open new possibilities (and unleash new threats). Wealth from shipping and natural resource extraction features prominently in narratives about the Arctic in the media, and governance of the region has become a major concern as new actors demand influence. We use three components of current discourse about the Arctic to help reveal connections between how the region is constructed and how the right to decide its future is articulated. Voices are the actors who participate in the discursive construction of Arctic futures, with varying degrees of influence. Resources are objects upon which actors inscribe values, thus locating them in the discourse. Governance refers to the structural features through which action is regulated within spaces, restricting also the range of legitimate actors. We demonstrate the usefulness of these concepts through brief case studies of coal on Spitsbergen, hydrocarbons in the Barents Sea and whaling in the North Atlantic. We conclude by emphasizing the value of a historical perspective to understanding contemporary debates about the future of the Arctic.

Between markets and geo-politics: natural resource exploitation on Spitsbergen from 1600 to the present day

What are the driving forces behind large scale natural resource exploitation in the polar regions and how should we understand the relations between these forces? New historical-archaeological research performed during the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2009 on whaling, hunting and mining in Spitsbergen (1600-present) show both economic and geopolitical factors driving the development of those industries, both the whaling industries in the 17th century and 1900s, and the mining industry of the early 20th century. However, the relation between these driving forces has differed, both between time periods and between actors. In most cases economic motives provided the main rationale for utilising resources and for government support for resource exploiters, but in some instances governments would support even unprofitable ventures in order to maintain a foothold on Spitsbergen.

Settlements in an Arctic Resource Frontier Region

In this article we use a core-periphery model in order to understand the general trends in the history of natural resource exploitation in the polar regions. The study focuses on whaling, hunting, and coal mining activities on the European High Arctic archipelago of Spitsbergen, from the seventeenth century to the present. We show that some of the whaling and mining stations developed a regional position and a level of permanence that is not expected in a Resource Frontier Region. The explanation is that there were not only economic reasons but also geopolitical motives for establishing and maintaining these stations, making it possible to build organizations strong enough to sustain them. This phenomenon is not accounted for in the core-periphery model because of a focus on economic driving forces in core regions. In order to understand the role of such stations in polar Resource Frontier Regions, they should be characterized as centers in the periphery.

Swedish Explorers, In-Situ Knowledge, and Resource-Based Business in the Age of Empire

The period from 1870 to 1914 plays a unique role in the history of natural resource exploration and extraction. This article analyses, from a Swedish viewpoint, the connections between two actor categories of special importance in this context: scientific-geographical explorers and industrial actors. The article examines their activities in three broadly defined regions: the Arctic, Russia, and Africa. We show that the Swedes generally had far-reaching ambitions, on par with those of the large imperial powers. In some cases, notably in Africa, Sweden was not able to compete with the larger imperial powers; but in other cases, such as the exploration of the Arctic – from Spitsbergen to Siberia – and the industrial exploitation of coal at Spitsbergen and petroleum in Russia’s colonial periphery, Swedish actors played a leading role, in competition with players from the larger European nations. Our paper shows that scientific exploration and industry were closely linked, and that foreign policy also influenced the shaping of these links. We distinguish different types of knowledge produced by the Swedish actors, pointing to local, situated knowledge as the most important type for many resource-based businesses, although modern, scientific knowledge was on the increase during this period.

Swedish steel and global resource colonialism: Sandviken’s quest for Turkish chromium, 1925–1950

ABSTRACT This article analyses Swedish industry’s attempts to secure strategic raw materials in an era of global resource colonialism. More precisely, it tells the story of how Sandvikens Jernverk – a leading Swedish steel producer – set out to secure its need for chromium ore during the Interwar Era. Up to the late 1920s, Sandviken sourced its chromium from British and French colonies. However, the company feared the British Empire’s growing dominance in the global chromium ore market. In 1928, then, Sandviken joined forces with several other Swedish steel producers, forming a consortium that, with ample help from Swedish foreign policy actors, managed to establish an independent source of chromium ore in Turkey. This project, however, which took the form of an Istanbul-based mining company, made big losses and was abandoned after only a few years. The project failed because of changes in the world chromium market, the global economic crisis, conflicts with the company’s Turkey-based managing director and the Swedish reluctance to scale up mining in such a way that the chromium ore might compete with Rhodesian, New Caledonian and Baluchistani ore.

Three galleries of the Anthropocene

This paper considers three ‘galleries’ that explore the Anthropocene in cultural ways, and the implications of the Anthropocene idea for cultural institutions and heritage. The first gallery is the 2014–2016 exhibition Welcome to the Anthropocene: The Earth in Our Hands, [Willkommen im Anthropozän: Unsere Verantwortung für die Zukunft der Erde] at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. The second ‘gallery’ of Anthropocene Posters sponsored by the Art Museum, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), placed the Anthropocene in a ‘museum without walls’ in the streets of Berlin in 2013. The third ‘gallery of the Anthropocene’, was not a museum, but rather a landscape gallery (or ‘spectacle’) of in situ industrial heritage in Svalbard. Pyramiden, a town established to mine coal well north of the Arctic Circle in the early 20th century, has been recently transformed as an attraction for climate change science and heritage tourism. Here the hybridized local landscape creates a snapshot of the Anthropocene, bringing together industrial coal-mining heritage buildings, polar tourism and science forged in the geopolitics of the changing Arctic environment.

Acting Artifacts: On the Meanings of Material Culture in Antarctica

Remains of human activity in Antarctica are generally treated in two different ways—either as unwanted imprints polluting a pristine natural environment, objects alien to the continent that must be removed, or as cultural heritage that needs to be preserved. For this reason, artefacts of potentially great importance for understanding and explaining the history of Antarctica are removed, while sites of arguably lesser universal value are preserved as heritage. The objective of this article is to argue for greater caution when assessing what should be treated as trash or heritage in the Antarctic. Before decisions are made to remove remains of human activities there, greater attention should be paid to the fact that these remains may acquire value in the future. Building on theoretical approaches within the fields of industrial heritage studies, history of technology and archaeology, my point of departure is an understanding that material culture can be connected with a multitude of meanings and values, depending on who is reading it and when. Remains of human activities can be ascribed values if there are actors who want to include them as part of their networks and in a historical context that works in their favor.

Extracting the Future in Svalbard

Minerals are not resources in and of themselves; they are constructed as such through processes involving narratives about the future, produced by actors who wish to realize them. This book chapter analyses how actors within industry successfully constructed the archipelago of Svalbard as a place for resource extraction at the turn of 1900. They made use of favorable historical contexts and enrolled investors and political supporters by future visions about market opportunities and serving national interests. In 2018, most of these mines are abandoned, providing a fruitful point of departure for critically evaluating future visions of the Arctic as an arena for resource extraction and to consider the sustainability of communities built around resource extraction there.

Heritage, Conservation, and the Geopolitics of Svalbard: Writing the History of Arctic Environments

In their examination of heritage and conservation practices in Svalbard and the Spitsbergen archipelago from the nineteenth-century to today, the authors mobilize the concept of critical geopolitics to show how Arctic localities have been used as instruments of Norwegian nation building, past and present. They argue that the writing of environmental history is never separate from politics or societal and culturally inscribed power structures by which spaces construed as primordial and pristine landscapes become privileged sites for the construction of Arctic ideologies. The establishment of national parks, the construction of mining heritage sites, or the undertaking of settlement archeology all serve such purposes, by which Svalbard becomes an icon of the culturally and politically motivated definitions of “wilderness.”

Three gelleries of the anthropocene

This paper considers three ‘galleries’ that explore the Anthropocene in cultural ways, and the implications of the Anthropocene idea for cultural institutions and heritage. The first gallery is the 2014–2016 exhibition Welcome to the Anthropocene: The Earth in Our Hands, [Willkommen im Anthropozän: Unsere Verantwortung für die Zukunft der Erde] at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. The second ‘gallery’ of Anthropocene Posters sponsored by the Art Museum, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), placed the Anthropocene in a ‘museum without walls’ in the streets of Berlin in 2013. The third ‘gallery of the Anthropocene’, was not a museum, but rather a landscape gallery (or ‘spectacle’) of in situ industrial heritage in Svalbard. Pyramiden, a town established to mine coal well north of the Arctic Circle in the early 20th century, has been recently transformed as an attraction for climate change science and heritage tourism. Here the hybridized local landscape creates a snapshot of the Anthropocene, bringing together industrial coal-mining heritage buildings, polar tourism and science forged in the geopolitics of the changing Arctic environment.