The Urban Arctic: Rhythms and Imaginaries of a Contested North

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The Urban Arctic

Rhythms and Imaginaries of a Contested North

Espen Meisfjord Thesis rMA Cultural Analysis Supervisor: Prof. dr. Esther Peeren

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First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Esther Peeren, for her continuous support throughout a very challenging thesis-writing process that was characterized by isolation and, in no small part, self-deprivation. Esther has truly gone above and beyond her role as a supervisor. Her constructive remarks on my many drafts and kind words of encouragement gave me the confidence to see this project through to its conclusion.

I would also like to thank my friends and family to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude for providing me with the emotional support and relief needed to remain sane over these past few months. And, for bearing with me as I have, on more than one occasion, proceeded to rant about the poetics of rhythm and the politics of the high north.

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Introduction

Cold. Desolate. Remote. These are words that easily come to mind when thinking about the Arctic. The Arctic region has long been conceived as existing on the fringes of civilization, if not marking its very end. Its landscape and people have been made other and peripheral to the perceived centers of the world. Largely absent within the Arctic imaginary, therefore, are imaginings of urban spaces. Despite the presence of several larger, thriving urban settlements in the region, especially in the Barents, they have little influence on the predominant Arctic imaginary as a remote, timeless, and uninhabited place. To think of the Arctic as urban would thus be to signal a potential disruption of the imaginary through which the region is known. The extent to which such an imaginary is deemed desirable by urbanities within the region is the question around which this analysis will revolve.

This thesis will analyze the northern Norwegian city of Bodø’s winning bid for the title European Capital of Culture1 (henceforth ECoC) for the year 2024, titled Bodø2024. The image of the Arctic as a different but resourceful place makes up the very core of Bodø’s bid, throughout which there can be read a desire to inscribe the Arctic into a larger European imaginary, stressing the Arctic as a region with which we all (should) have a relationship. To this end, the bid offers the reader the concept of ARCTICulation, defined as “a framework for a new portrait of the Arctic,” which aims to show Bodø and the surrounding county of Nordland “as a true region in Europe and the world, not a distant periphery” (Bodø2024 6). Described in ways that might seem to conjure a form of environmental determinism, Bodø2024 aims to

1_{First initiated in 1985, the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) program is arguably the European Union’s (EU)}

most ambitious and well-received cultural program to date. In practice, the EU, upon recommendation from the European Commission, bestows the title of ECoC upon a city for a period of one calendar year, over the course of which an organizing body produces a series of cultural events and project that celebrates both unique individual qualities as well as shared European heritage.

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explore Bodø and Nordland’s “innate” connections between society, nature, and economy through the ECoC program in order to give them universal value.

The primary objective of my reading of the bid is to explore the ways in which Bodø2024 constructs the notion of an “urban Arctic” – an urbanity that is connected to a larger world as well as to its immediate natural environment in ways contingent upon as well as contesting preconceptions of both urban and Arctic space. I have therefore chosen the urban

Arctic as the concept through which I will approach the bid – a concept designed to bring

attention to urbanized settlements in what is commonly seen as a hostile and uninhabitable environment. With a primary interest in exploring the ways in which Arctic imaginaries and narratives are brought to bear on the urban milieu, this reading encourages different ways of thinking about the urban. Likewise, the urban Arctic provides a conceptual framework for thinking about what the Arctic is and what it potentially could be. I should stress that the urban Arctic, as formulated here, is not intended to denote a set of holistic qualities through which all urbanities above the 66th parallel can be defined. Such an agenda would inevitably rely on various forms of essentialisms and superficial renderings of place. Rather, the urban Arctic is intended as a conceptual tool to highlight and frame my reading of the bid. Conceptualized as a piece of creative fiction, I argue that the bid produces descriptions that have the potential to change dominant preconceptions about the Arctic.

In Chapter 1, I will explore how Bodø’s bid reflects (on) the Arctic’s role in climate narratives and the ways in which it copes with the impact of, but also responds to and instrumentalizes narratives of climate change in a process of (urban) place reinvention. In this process, the notion of an urban Arctic is not only present in the situatedness of Bodø as the object of reinvention, but also emerges as a central concept and imaginary in the portrayal of the Arctic of today and tomorrow as a site of universal relevance in addressing questions of climate change. The close reading will consist of an analysis of the bid’s narrative and visual

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strategies as positioned within larger discourses of place. The reading will show how the bid, through a strategy aimed at urban place reinvention, constructs Bodø as a distinctly Arctic city capable of transcending its immediate locality and entering into “global” space. More specifically, I will contend that Bodø makes use of the ECoC as a platform for launching an “Arctic strategy” aimed at positioning the city within the Arctic region so that it may build visions of its future within this geography. Paradoxically, these strategies downplay references to urban space in favor of pertaining to long-standing notions of the Arctic as home to naturalized spaces and cultures. The indigenous Sami people are particularly highlighted in this regard, not only as an authoritative voice on nature-culture relationships, but as in and of themselves potent signifiers of the Arctic. In the interest of pushing the environmental agenda, however, Bodø2024 continues to rely on stereotyped portrayals and narratives of the Sami who as a result become excluded from the urban milieu.

Chapter 2 takes as its primary focus the ways in which the bid exhibits an orientation toward rhythm as a tool for describing life in the (urban) Arctic. This orientation incentivizes the methodological project of rhythmanalysis as a means of rethinking and potentially overcoming the bordering practices through which nature and the urban are constructed as binary opposites. More specifically, this chapter will inquire about the utility of rhythmanalysis as a theoretical model for figuring a timely synthesis between ideas of nature and culture, and by extension nature and the urban. I voice a critique of the rhythmanalytical framework by arguing that although it might complicate the border that has come to separate urban from natural space, the framework itself calls for a separation between the natural and the cultural. A close reading of the bid ultimately discloses rhythmanalysis as a biased reflection of human ideals in which the unnatural culture of capitalist modernity continues to play the role of the antagonist to a natural state of being underpinned by rhythms allegedly produced outside human collusion.

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The remainder of the introduction will elucidate Arctic imaginaries as the conceptual backdrop against which this thesis is set. As will be further explored below, an emphasis on the imaginary nature of the Arctic highlights that the Arctic has never existed as a homogenous entity but is more fruitfully understood as a fragmentary, dialogical, and highly contested space.

Arctic Imaginaries

Perhaps now more than ever, the Arctic region is seen as a contested space – a battleground for the political and cultural rights of indigenous peoples; a challenge to Westphalian notions of national space; and a window onto global futures in questions of climate change. Embracing this diversity of perspectives, Philip Steinberg et al. conceive of a field of multiple and contesting Arctic imaginaries. Defined as “constellations of ideas about what the Arctic is, and what it can be” (Steinberg et al. 6), Arctic imaginaries are conceived as dynamic, fundamentally pluralist, and never pure. Depending on one’s perspective,

the Arctic may be seen as an integral part of the existing nation-state. A sub-national indigenous group’s homeland, a lost hearth of the national soul, a resource colony that is essentially empty of humans and that exists to be exploited (weather through mining or nature tourism) or preserved, a space of everyday activities (i.e., a “home”), or the Arctic may simply be forgotten. (Steinberg et al. 6)

The imaginaries discerned by Steinberg et al. express different, often competing conceptions of Arctic space and how it should be governed. The significance of these imaginaries therefore lies in the selective ways in which they were constructed, by whom, and for what purposes. As Dag Avango and Peder Roberts contend, “imaginations of Arctic space were, are, and always will be snapshots of cultural, political, and economic geographies as much as physical geographies” (125). Arctic imaginaries therefore provide insight into how “the anxieties and

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ambitions of particular people at particular times are inscribed upon environments through description and location within narratives that in turn provide frames for practices” (Avango and Roberts 125). In the opening of this introduction, I made some rather broad claims with regards to the way in which the Arctic region tends to be conceived, at least in the west, as a cold, remote, and desolate place. This idea of a distant and deserted Arctic persists in both academic and popular discourse, fueled by multiple long-standing Arctic imaginaries.

The foundation for today’s (western) presumptions about the Arctic lies in the narratives produced by various Arctic expeditions of the 19th and 20th centuries, spearheaded by such figures as Fritjof Nansen and Sir John Franklin. Ultimately motivated by expansionist imperial ideologies, the Arctic was seen by these early adventurers as an unexplored and unclaimed territory – a terra nullius. Crucially, this was a space to be traversed, and not a destination in itself. The Arctic explorer myth, Lill-Ann Körber et al. write, “assumes that there is no staying” (2). This myth bears on Arctic imaginaries in two ways. First, the emphasis placed on the inbound journey reinforces the perception of the Arctic region as remote. Second, the impending, and often longed for, outbound journey, complimented by the persistent portrayal of the Arctic as an uninhabitable land void of sustenance, advances the idea of the Arctic as a place that does not encourage prolonged settlement.

This “trope” continues to surface in cultural texts of more recent date in which the Arctic setting has been employed as a narrative device. In the first installment of Philip Pullman’s book trilogy His Dark Materials, for instance, the protagonist, Lyra Belacqua, must make her way to a research station in the Arctic wastes to rescue a group of abducted children. Not only does the plot reiterate the trope of the Arctic journey in the form of a rescue mission, but the novel also introduces a group of characters that personify the inherent otherness of the Arctic: the polar bears known as Panserbjørne. Unlike their human counterparts, the Panserbjørne, portrayed as talking, sentient, and of human intelligence, do not have dæmons – the external

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physical manifestation of a person's soul in the form of an animal. Moreover, the king of the Panserbjørne, Iofur Raknison, is portrayed as attempting to emulate human society by drinking spirits, wearing opulent clothes, and wanting to obtain his own dæmon. While characteristically strong of mind and hard to deceive, King Raknison’s emulation of human society has made him a gullible and incapable monarch in the eyes of his subjects. The Panserbjørn kingdom portrayed by Pullman ultimately appears as a poor imitation of human society that fails to live up to the standards of the civilized, human south. Moreover, having the Arctic be a kingdom of polar bears rather than humans underscores the imagination of the region as a home only to non-human creatures.

The popular television series Game of Thrones, based on a series of books by George R. R. Martin, has similarly taken up the trope of a distant and hostile Arctic. In the diegetic universe of the series, the region known as the “Lands of Always Winter,” is physically separated from the southern kingdoms by a massive ice wall and portrayed as a barren wasteland home to nomadic tribes of people referred to as “Wildlings.” The region is also home to the primary antagonists of the series, the “White Walkers,” portrayed as ice themed, humanoid monstrosities that, together with an army of zombies they have raised from the dead, aim to bring about the annihilation of the civilized south. Commonly interpreted as a metaphor for climate change, the White Walkers exudes themes related to nature’s revenge on a cancerous civilization. More generally, the White Walkers can be read as the human(oid) embodiment of a traitorous and uninhabitable Arctic, connecting the Arctic environment to themes of death and desolation.

In both these examples, the Arctic milieu is portrayed as a location from which the protagonists must escape or as hazardous terrain through which they must traverse as part of a greater mission. Rarely, if ever, is the Arctic portrayed as a favorable destination in itself. As a narrative device, the Arctic setting makes for an exciting tale by offering a variety of challenges

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for the protagonist(s) to face, ranging from the scarcity of supplies and the extreme climate to the potential for isolation-induced madness. Simply put, the trope of the Arctic journey manifests as a narrative device for the exploration of human emotions and actions in extreme circumstances, for a limited duration. To enable this, the Arctic needs to be portrayed as the antithesis of civilization and the human.

In relation to contemporary Arctic geopolitics, Ann-Sofie Gremaud has pointed to the paradoxical nature of the surging interest in the Arctic, which, on the one hand, is driven by ambitions to extract and control valuable resources, while, on the other hand, conceiving of the Arctic as ground zero for climate induced change (197). The former imaginary is often portrayed as being enabled by the latter, presenting the Arctic as only recently having become “open for business.” This imaginary of the Arctic as a resource frontier is illustrated in Steffen Weber and Iulian Romanyshyn’s 2011 article, “Breaking the Ice: The European Union and the Arctic,” of which the opening paragraph reads:

Formerly remote and of little relevance, the region now attracts significant political and economic interest as melting ice opens possibilities for the exploitation of Arctic natural resources and access to new trade routes. (849)

Here, Weber and Romanyshyn revive the trope of the Arctic journey not only in the reference to trade routes, but also in the conception of resource extraction in the Arctic as a challenge to be overcome. In the resource frontier imaginary, the Arctic is seen as an economically valuable deposit of oil, gas, and minerals, as well in as marine and terrestrial wildlife. Moreover, the notion of the Arctic as a frontier exhibits an understanding of it as a “global common” where “ownership of the resources is somehow undetermined” (Steinberg et al. 92), thus making the region and its resources available to parties that would be considered outsiders in terms of geographical proximity. This imaginary, importantly, perpetuates latent colonial tendencies in

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which the Arctic is understood as an unclaimed and unexploited land at the fringes of civilization.

As will be further discussed in Chapter 1, the Arctic has also come to play a significant role in climate narratives as the antithesis to an unnatural civilization and as the standard against which to measure civilizations failings, including the relentless search for exploitable resources. In climate narratives, the Arctic tends to be conceived as a nature reserve – “an isolated region for the (non-human creatures) that live there” (Steinberg et al. 142). This imaginary is, however, not free from human collusion, standing as a reflection of human ideals far more than it reflects the material world of physical nature. Because it illuminates how narratives and imaginaries of the Arctic, and of nature more generally, are anthropocentrically conceived, the idea of the Arctic as wilderness, as theorized by William Cronon, will be central to the research at hand.

Crucially, Arctic space is also an important stage for the negotiation of identities (Gremaud 198). As can be observed in the above, imaginaries of Arctic space are, more often than not, projected onto it from the outside. This is the case for the terra nullius, resource frontier, and nature reserve imaginary, which all render the Arctic region as largely desolate and uninhabited. The use of the term “Arctic” in the current study is therefore of a strategic disposition, designed to speak to the way in which outsiders conceive of the region. Bodø’s ECoC bid can be read to entertain such outside conceptions while also challenging them from within as it offers a locally grounded counter narrative to homogenizing discourses of the Arctic.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the various indigenous groups living in the Arctic also have their own imaginaries of the region, which may be complimentary to or in tension with outside perspectives. As will be further explored in both chapters, the indigenous Sami population that inhabits northern Scandinavia, as well as parts of Finland and Russia, is extensively featured in Bodø’s ECoC bid, presented as emblematic of the allegedly Arctic virtue

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of living “in tune with nature.” The term “Arctic,” however, is in fact an outsider’s term in Sami languages, in which the term “Sápmi” is favored to describe the transnational region inhabited by the Sami people (Körber et al. 6). This perspective is, paradoxically, at odds with Bodø2024’s concept of ARCTICulation, which claims to represent locally grounded perspectives. In short, conflating the Sami with the Arctic thus runs the risk of representing Sami identity as reflective of external, rather than internal, ideals. The dialectic between “insiders” and “outsiders” that runs through the bid foregrounds the fundamentally contested nature of the region’s imaginary.

To conclude, the various ways in which the Arctic is imagined are always ideological and mobilized by actors to their own ends (Körber et al. 5). Although the imaginaries discussed in this introduction all portray the Arctic as predominantly desolate and remote, I will emphasize that the Arctic is at the center of vast political, cultural, environmental, and economic interest, and is in these terms far from being an inconsequential periphery. The persistent portrayal of it as peripheral, however, can sanction various, potentially exploitive, advances into arctic space. Standing at the intersection of shifting ecologies, politics, and cultures (Stuhl 782), imaginaries of what the Arctic is and what it can be matter profoundly as they fuel incentives for material change as well as affecting lived experience in the region. The Arctic of today and tomorrow portrayed in Bodø’s bid should similarly be understood and approached as one of many possible representations of life in the Arctic, developed and employed with specific goals in mind. The various western imaginaries of a distant and deserted Arctic discussed in this introduction constitute the discursive backdrop against which Bodø’s bid is situated and from which it, to some extent, seeks to depart in order to revalidate the city of Bodø, placing it on the map as not remote and peripheral, but as connected and potentially central. The question of how exactly the bid goes about this revalidation, and what its potentials and pitfalls are, will be central to my analysis of the bid in the following chapters.

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Chapter 1

From Cold to Cool: Narratives of Climate Change and Urban Place

Reinvention in the Arctic

From a cold war target To a European cultural hub Articulating an Arctic perspective

On today and tomorrow Through borderless culture

Respecting our histories The land and the sea Aiming for new horizons

It is commonly asserted that becoming a European Capital of Culture has a significant impact on a city and its surrounding region’s social and economic stature (Burksiene et al. 66). This status is also instrumental in the development and dissemination of a city’s image (Doğan and Sirkeci 30). Bodø’s bid is no exception in this regard, pointing to a major need for development in light of recent demographic, economical, and cultural shifts. What makes the bid immediately intriguing, however, is the way Bodø2024’s overall thematic focus on the Arctic seems to stand in tension with the notion of “capital (city)” invoked by the ECoC title.

Originally founded to promote European identity and integration among its member states, the first general objective of the ECoC is to “safeguard and promote the diversity of cultures in Europe and to highlight the common features they share as well as to increase

citizens' sense of belonging to a common cultural area” (Decision No. 445).2_{When read in}

conjunction with the urban lens suggested by the notion of “capital,” this objective implies a two-sided mobility that sees, on the one hand, the title of ECoC travel from city to city to bestow

2_{Adopted by the European Parliament and the Council in 2014 and amended in 2017, Decision No. 445 is the}

formal, legal basis for the European Capital of Culture action for the years 2020-2033. Consisting of 18 articles, the document outlines the background of the initiative, its objectives, criteria for and processes of selection, designation, monitoring, and evaluation.

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upon each an explicit European dimension, and, on the other, the individual ECoCs contributing, through their cultural and artistic programs, to the diversification of European cultural expressions. While the idea of Europe would for most people far exceed that of urban centers, it would seem that in the ECoC initiative’s attempt to bring the macro imaginary of Europe down to the local, experiential level, this idea takes on an irrefutable urbanized form.

In later years, the European Commission has also recognized and subsequently adopted a second general objective – the instrumental use of the title as a means to “foster the contribution of culture to the long-term development of cities in accordance with their respective strategies and priorities” (Decision No. 445). This objective has prompted a shift with regards to the cities nominated for ECoC in which historical cultural centers and capitals in the common sense of the term (e.g. Athens and Amsterdam) have been substituted by regional, post-industrial, or otherwise “neglected” cities (e.g. Glasgow and Liverpool) seeking to use the initiative as a “tool to regenerate, rebrand and reposition themselves in cultural and economic terms” (O’Callaghan 185). In this sense, the notion of “capital” in European Capital of Culture not only signals notions of centricity, historically, culturally, economically, or otherwise, but also identifies the ECoC initiative itself as something for the city to capitalize on. Nonetheless, the addition of city development as a second general objective further elevates the role of the city as the primary subject of the ECoC by making urban revitalization the raison d'être for partaking in the competition.

The quote that opens this chapter (Bodø2024 19) defines the core concept and development strategy around which Bodø2024 revolves: ARCTICulation. In the bid’s introduction, this concept is described as “a framework for a new portrait of the Arctic, showing [the Arctic] as a true region in Europe and the world, not a distant periphery. Showing what an innovative and creative area the Arctic region is” (6). The Arctic, Ann-Sofie Gramaud argues, “is a space that hosts the power play of rapidly changing geopolitical structures as well as

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projections of ecological imaginaries” (208). As a window onto global futures in questions of climate change, the Arctic region has become inseparable from notions of wilderness as “the standard against which to measure the failings of our human world” (Cronon 16). Conceptualized as “having largely escaped the sullying hands of humankind” (Steinberg et al. 142), the Arctic’s supposedly pristine environment is treated as “a baseline for measuring climate-induced change” (Stuhl 114). Climate narratives, in their effort to preserve Arctic wilderness as a discursive device in environmental and scientific discourse, have therefore contributed to the western image of the Arctic as untouched and uninhabited – where it appears as a passive bystander and on the receiving end of the impacts of climate change.

In contrast, Bodø’s ECoC bid insists on human presence in the region. Placing an emphasis on the so-called “awareness that Arctic people have of the environment in a concrete, personal way, which connects nature, society and economy in a relationship that has deep meaning in today’s challenging times,” Bodø2024 seeks to articulate – or ARCTICulate – and explore these connections in order to “give them universal value to share with an international audience” (6). As further stated in the bid’s introduction: “ARCTICulation will show why and how Bodø and Nordland are central to Europe, through its history and unique position in the Arctic. […] Bodø is ready to transition from Arctic to ARCTICulation, from cold to cool” (7). Situated within a larger discourse of place, the rhetorical transition from “cold to cool” signals a move from dystopian imagery to utopian prophecy in which a change in the human response to climate induced change in the Arctic challenges preconceptions about the region as conditioned by these narratives in the first place.

In this chapter, I question how Bodø’s bid reflects (on) the Arctic’s role in climate narratives and explore the ways in which the bid responds to and instrumentalizes narratives of climate change in a process of urban place reinvention. I contend that Bodø makes use of the ECoC as a platform for launching an “Arctic strategy” aimed at positioning the city within the

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Arctic region so that it may build visions of the future within this geography. I will begin by addressing the Arctic climate narrative against which Bodø2024’s program is situated by mobilizing the concepts of the New North (Stuhl), the nature reserve imaginary (Steinberg et al.), and wilderness (Cronon). Read in conjunction with Nyseth and Viken’s concept of place

reinvention, the latter parts of the chapter will present a close reading of the bid’s visual and

textual content in which I will inquire upon how the imaginary of an urban Arctic is made to act as a microcosm for Europe and the world in light of the challenges posed by climate change as well as upon how the bid constructs Bodø as a distinctly Arctic urbanity. Also central to this reading is the way in which the indigenous Sami people are portrayed in the bid. Represented as authoritative voices in addressing questions of climate change and as potent signifiers of the Arctic milieu as a “natural” one, I argue that Bodø2024 perpetuates a traditional notion of Sami identity as rooted outside the urban milieu.

In the Firing Line of Climate Change

By logically ordering events and ascribing meaning to them, narratives are central in human communication as a means of constructing identities and making sense of the world more generally. Narratives also transcend their authors and circulate as part of greater discourses that give meaning to events, space, and human actions (Nyseth and Viken 9). Narratives of local change, Nyseth and Viken argue, are profoundly impacted by these “meta-narratives” as they are forced to respond to them as well as being conditioned by them in the first place. In the case of the Arctic, the meta-narrative of climate change is foregrounded in the bid as a central concern. As stated in its introduction, “Living on the edge of Europe, up here in the Arctic region means that the climate challenges and changes are more visible. It is almost as if we can watch the effects on our nature happen on a daily basis” (6). The use of the pronoun “our” is of particular interest here as it reinforces the association between Bodø and the greater Arctic,

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which allows for the portrayal of Bodø and the county of Nordland as conjointly being “in the firing line of climate change” (Bodø2024 61). The statement is also illustrative of the way in which imaginaries of the Arctic milieu are conditioned by climate narratives. Firstly, describing the Arctic as “the edge of Europe” perpetuates notions of the Arctic as remote in relation to a perceived continental center. Secondly, the statement envisions climate change as something that exclusively takes place in “nature.” As will be further explored later in this chapter, these stances are central to the way in which Bodø2024 goes about constructing its portrayal of the urban Arctic. While an extensive overview of climate narratives in the Arctic goes beyond the scope of this chapter, I will in the following consult a series of concepts that elucidate on and capture the impact of these narratives. These concepts help to define the discursive background against which Bodø’s bid is situated and to which it also responds.

Andrew Stuhl argues that climate narratives have “entrenched the notion of the Arctic-as-exotic to provide a cautionary tale about how the world will someday look” (114). Building on literature on the North American Arctic, Stuhl identifies the trope of the New North, conceptualized as narratives about the north of today and tomorrow made with explicit reference to an evaluation and reinterpretation of the historical record in their appeal to novelty and call to action – putting both history and geography at stake in Arctic futures. Simply put, according to Stuhl, it is only by erasing, defacing, or redeeming history that the Arctic can be deemed “new.” In its latest iteration, the New North conjures an image of the Arctic as having escaped the clutches of modernity, paradoxically erasing human presence from the region (with the exception of indigenous presence which is held as being emblematic of a natural way of life) – a presence that in previous iterations was seen as a promising prospect for a northward course of civilization. In this new narrative, environmental change in the Arctic, as evidenced by increasing temperatures, requires an original “cold” and pristine Arctic that is to be preserved. Melting polar caps thus become representative of the region as a whole,

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overshadowing other geographical features and instilling a “desired” image of the Arctic as a place of perpetual coldness. The danger of this rhetoric is that in order for the Arctic to pack its rhetorical punch as a discursive device alerting people all over the world to the perils of climate change, it must first (again) become conceived as “wild” and void of human presence.

Along similar lines, in their research on Arctic imaginaries, Steinberg et al. deduce the idea of the Arctic as a nature reserve as a potent imaginary that continues to influence debates on Arctic futures. In this particular vision,

the Arctic is a place in need of protection from those who would seek to utilize its resources […] Here the Arctic is less a place for humans, who are – to varying degrees – integrated into global political and economic relations, and more an isolated region for the (non-human) creatures that live there. (142)

Both the nature reserve imaginary of the Arctic and the latest iteration of the New North reflect what William Cronon describes as the paradox of wilderness. The trouble with wilderness, he writes, is that it “embodies a dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural” (Cronon 17). Simply put, nature is found where humans are not. Situated as the “ultimate landscape of authenticity,” wilderness is treated as “the natural, unfallen antithesis of an unnatural civilization that has lost its soul” (Cronon 16). The consequence of upholding notions of wilderness as an aspirational ideal is that there is “little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like” (Cronon 17). In other words, desires to escape to or preserve wilderness pose a serious threat to environmental efforts as they run the risk of keeping us from taking responsibility for how we live our lives elsewhere.

Although Cronon is primarily concerned with North American environmental efforts, the notion of wilderness resonates strongly with contemporary preconceptions of the Arctic as

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conditioned by climate narratives. While not working to fulfill pastoral dreams of escape to the same extent as the national parks addressed by Cronon, the Arctic can certainly be said to embody the ideal of an authentic landscape that stand as the antithesis to civilization in questions of global environmental change. As a consequence, the region’s many inhabitants are silenced, effectively rendering the Arctic as a passive bystander to and on the receiving end of the discursive and material impacts of climate change.

The irony of an Arctic heavily conditioned by climate narratives as a pristine and desolate place is illustrated in a 2019 article by the Guardian’s picture editor Fiona Shields. In the article, she explains why the newspaper has chosen to move away from widely circulated Arctic imagery in its climate journalism. Expressing reservations about the enduring image of the lone polar bear stranded on a melting shard of sea ice, Shields states that “these images tell a certain story about the climate crisis but can seem remote and abstract – a problem that is not a human one, nor one that is particularly urgent.” By moving toward imagery of the daily lives and lived experiences of humans, the Guardian aims to better indicate the scale and impact of climate change. To illustrate this transition, Shields directs the attention of the reader to images of more or less densely populated urban settlements elsewhere in the world. In doing so, she ends up reproducing the image of the Arctic as propagated by climate narratives, namely as a pristine and desolate place. The irony, as illustrated by Shield’s article, is that the prevailing narratives that have placed the Arctic at the front line of the climate crisis have also rendered the region inadequate for conveying the impacts and urgency of climate change with respect to lived human experience. While Shields argues along similar lines as Cronon when expressing the need to move past the understanding of climate change as something taking place in a remote elsewhere, the Arctic, as too deeply embedded in notions of wilderness, ends up simply being written off.

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The above defines the discursive backdrop against which Bodø2024’s bid is situated and from which it seeks to depart in order to revalidate the Arctic and put it on the map as not remote and peripheral, but connected and potentially central. Following Stuhl’s conviction that preconceptions about the Arctic have been, and still are, relative rather than absolute, I will in the following sections analyze how the bid moves beyond relations as currently defined in order to position Bodø and its surrounding region as being at “the vanguard of a successful European response to climate change” (Bodø2024 61). It is to this project and its construction of the urban Arctic that I now turn.

From Cold to Cool: The Urban Arctic

As a new portrait of the Arctic, ARCTICulation is indicative of what Nyseth and Viken conceptualize as a “reinvention of place.” In contrast to branding as an active, strategic, and deliberate policy for changing the image of a place, place reinvention is a broader concept that emphasizes the intimate link between the material and symbolic production of place as connected to, and influenced by, larger discourses and narratives (Nyseth and Viken 11). Reinvention entails both inventions (continuous and often unplanned changes) and

interventions (direct, planned, and intentional processes) as vehicles of change, with the notion

of reinvention itself pointing to something that has been left behind becoming recreated, renewed, or redefined. As strategic aspects of place reinvention, marketing processes, such as the ECoC program and the bid, express time-specific power constellations that tap into the cultural scripts at hand, exploiting as well as confronting them (Granås 113). While the Arctic region has been firmly established as the epicenter of climate change, the region has paradoxically been rendered peripheral with regards to the push for an effective response. Positioning Bodø within this narrative, ARCTICulation signals a potential challenge to relations as currently defined, made possible, in part, by reference to urban space.

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As described in the bid, in the opening week of Bodø2024’s program, audiences will be invited to take part in a livestreamed journey to Bodø featuring images caught from flights, trains, and boats heading toward the city. Inspired by the broadcasting phenomenon of slow

TV,3 the cameras attached to these various forms of transportation glide uninterrupted over seemingly endless terrain projected to feature all of Nordland, including its scenic landscapes as well as all of its ten regional centers. Minute by minute the stream will go by, culminating in the opening ceremony upon arrival in Bodø. While reiterating the trope of the northward journey so typical of narratives taking place in Arctic environments, the final destination is not a desolate pole or research station, but an urban center. Rather than portraying Bodø as a mere gateway to a larger circumpolar region, the opening week firmly establishes the city as an Arctic destination in its own right. As implied by the extensive infrastructure that facilitates the journey and the added dimension of an inclusive digital platform that enables a large audience to partake in this voyage, Bodø is portrayed as a city that is not only connected to, but part of a larger Europe and world.

The above description of the program’s opening week is illustrative of how the imaginary of an urban Arctic presents itself from the very outset of the year-long program. The prominence of the city of Bodø as the program’s center stage and object of its urban reinvention strategy is evident in the frequently reiterated title of the program, Bodø2024, as well as in the use of the city – its streets, institutions, and infrastructure – as the main stage for the program’s cultural and artistic content. Narratively speaking, Bodø thus assumes the role of a protagonist, distancing the bid from diffuse and non-descript portrayals of the Arctic.

3_{The term slow TV denotes a genre of television popularized by the Norwegian national broadcasting service that}

covers an ordinary event, usually a journey, in its full length. Filmed and broadcasted in real time, the name is itself derived from a combination of the slow pace at which the broadcast progresses as well as the accumulated total length of the broadcast.

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Rather than acting as a point of departure for nature themed activities taking place outside the more or less defined borders of the city (although there are indeed projects that seemingly operate in this way), most of Bodø2024’s projects seek to bring notions of nature into the foils of urban space. In the proposed concert series, Leave Nothing but Footprints, for instance, the premise is to bring a single artist and a small film crew into “spectacular and sublime” landscapes and record the performance without an audience present at the site itself. Rather, the spectators will gather in public squares and downtown parks where they will witness the performance via big screens. Due to the affordances of the digital format, the performances are intended to be screened at several locations simultaneously – not only in centers across Nordland but also in the two other European Capitals of Culture of 2024. In addition to the performance itself, cameras will film the audience and live stream this footage on side screens at the other viewing locations. The audience of any given concert arena is then, by means of digital mediation, witnessing the show together with a greater crowd of spectators in what is phrased as a “great European celebration” (Bodø2024 30) that aims to set a new standard for sustainable live events as well as abstaining from damaging nature:

Live art is best enjoyed, well, live. But the health of our planet requires us to be creative and try out new ideas. This is our chance to change how we experience big cultural events. Bringing thousands of people to some of the most vulnerable areas of Europe may not be sustainable. Bringing thousands of people together in parks and squares in cities across Europe, enjoying big screen concerts and performances from these areas, is. We want to create a series of events that can be shared between the ECoCs on a whole new level. (Bodø2024 21)

The theme of achieving sustainability through the bridging of natural and urban space is also present in the project Nordland by Light, which aims to explore questions related to light and energy through a light festival. Set to the Arctic winter season, the festival will begin in darkness by staging a county-wide blackout. The absence of both direct and artificial light is intended to

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offer “a unique opportunity to heighten our senses, and at the same time communicate something substantial about our time’s most important issues” (Bodø2024 45). Rather than erasing urban presence by snuffing out the lights, however, the slowly emerging light installations following the blackout are framed as symbolic and material manifestations of a sustainable and progressive use of energy both within and outside of the Arctic. The project is, in fact, explicitly described as being a “climate change comment in darkness” (Bodø2024 54). Themes of light and sustainability also serve as the focal point in the project Lyskraft (light power) in which a series of recycled outdoor streetlamps powered by natural sources in their vicinity aim to stimulate an awareness of the immediate environment (Bodø2024 34). Through the added objective of utilizing electric or hybrid powered transportation and a digitally distributed opening show, the program’s opening week also intends to project the Nordland of 2024 as “a foundation for a fully sustainable and culturally smart region” (Bodø2024 24). Together, these projects conjure what the bid labels the “Nordland brand,” projecting a place “In tune with the nature that surrounds us. Creative, yet technologically advanced” (Bodø2024 14).

The bid’s opening week and subsequent project descriptions situate the nature-culture relationship around which ARCTICulation is based as largely taking place in or with reference to urbanized space. ARCTICulation may thus, in part, be read as an urbanized concept in that it seeks to mediate an Arctic experience to an outside world through an urban milieu. According to Nyseth, Arctic cities are not considered global cities in terms of being command centers in the world economy, nor are they centers of production and consumption (61). Through recourse to innovative, environmentally conscious conduct in the bid for Bodø to become a European Capital of Culture, however, the Arctic city is highlighted as a site of sustainable innovation. Bodø’s bid can thus be considered an intervention – a strategic place reinvention process in which an intentional intercession in the Arctic’s role in climate narratives is mobilized as a

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vehicle for change. Subsequently, the nature-urban relationship around which ARCTICulation revolves situates the urban Arctic on the frontier of discovering what an honorable and ethical human place in nature might look like, thereby acting as a microcosm for Europe and the world at large.

The visual representation of Europe depicted under the section pertaining to the bid’s “European Dimension” visually underscores Bodø’s transition from periphery to center (see Figure 1). Giorgia Aiello and Crispin Thurlow (whose research on the visual discourse of the ECoC will be further elaborated upon in the following section) argue that, in the context of the ECoC, prospective candidates employ a series of visual strategies in their maps to draw attention to and symbolically prioritize themselves (156). Chief among these strategies is the use of contrastive coloring and centering, both of which are present in Bodø2024’s map. Concentric circles in various shades of gray emanate from Bodø’s circular geographical marker, encouraging the reader to trace the circles to their center. In addition to typing the name of the city in caps, its marker is made distinct from that of the partner cities by leaving the center of the circle transparent. This serves the dual function of heightening the image of Bodø as a coastal city – connected to both land and sea – by making the underlying coastline more easily visible and framing it within the circle, while also stressing a desire and need for new experiences and room for innovation and development by signaling a space yet to be filled in.

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Crucially, the map visually frames Bodø’s connection to continental Europe in terms of partnerships with other cities. This enables Bodø to assume the stature of regional, national, and global centers elsewhere in Europe. As can be observed in the map, as well as in the project descriptions of the opening week and Leave Nothing but Footprints, the “borderless culture” at the heart of ARCTICulation is exercised in relation to urban spatial practices and infrastructure. By highlighting themes of connectivity, infrastructure, networking, and dialogue, Arctic urbanism challenges notions of the Arctic as inaccessible or shielded from the rest of the world. Furthermore, it is through urban mediation that Bodø2024 is able to establish itself as a site of broader relevance to other environmentally stressed areas, places that otherwise may not be able to relate to the alleged Arctic way of life. Cast in the role of a protagonist speaking on behalf of the Arctic region, the urban Arctic voiced in Bodø2024’s bid may thus be fruitfully considered as a discursive and narrative device that enables the Arctic region and its inhabitants to speak back against the Arctic’s usual role as a passive bystander in climate narratives. That

Figure 1. Visual

representation of Europe (Bodø2024 69).

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which is recovered after having been erased and defaced in climate narratives thus reveals itself as the imaginary of an urban Arctic.

In contrast to the other cities shown on the map, Bodø is evidently positioned above the Arctic Circle. Curving so as to more clearly represent the idea of a latitude, the inclusion of the Arctic circle on the map makes it abundantly clear that Bodø belongs to a distinctly Arctic geography. As Bodø2024’s microcosm seems to rely on the supposed awareness that Arctic people have of the environment in a concrete, personal way, it follows that the bid must affirm Bodø’s foothold in the Arctic and the way in which this awareness comes about. As will be further explored in the following section, the bid employs a series of descriptive and visual strategies to further highlight and make exclusive Bodø’s geographical position – strategies that, paradoxically, downplay references to urban space in favor of pertaining to long-standing notions of the Arctic as home to naturalized spaces and cultures.

ARCTICulation: An Arctic Strategy

To characterize a certain space as Arctic, Avango and Roberts argue, “is to incorporate it within a system of meaning that is underdetermined by physical geography” (139). In order for Bodø to be seen as an Arctic city, then, Bodø2024 must engage with narratives and discourses that enable a connection to a greater Arctic to be made. Addressing, incorporating, and responding to narratives of climate change can as such be read as a means through which Bodø can establish itself as pertaining to an Arctic environment. ARCTICulation is, in this regard, emblematic of what I hold to be Bodø2024’s “Arctic strategy,” in which the Arctic is foregrounded as the main action area for development – an action area in relation to which Bodø can assert its position as a geopolitical and cultural agent in a region that attracts broad international attention. As will be explored below, Bodø and Nordland’s Arctic locality and culture is affirmed through a series

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of descriptive and visual strategies that play on long-standing notions of the Arctic as a naturalized milieu. In doing so, the bid also poses a consistent challenge to the ECoC initiative’s inscription of centralized urban space while simultaneously contesting imaginaries of the Arctic in which the region is conceived as a frozen wasteland.

Arctic Urbanism

As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, notions of the city are front and center within the ECoC scheme. In fact, Article 3 of Decision No. 445 bluntly declares that cities are the only entities eligible to apply for the title. In the event that a city involves its surrounding area in its ECoC program, it is further required that the application be made under the name of that city (Decision No. 445). Accordingly, despite the emphasis on the county of Nordland, Bodø2024 centers its program, rhetorically at least, on the regional capital of Bodø. The imaginary of an urban Arctic voiced in Bodø’s bid is, then, to some extent inscribed by the conditions set by the ECoC initiative.

While this is not the primary focus of their analysis, Aiello and Thurlow reach a similar conclusion with regards to the close link between notions of Europeanness and urban space in the ECoC initiative. Within it, they discern a repertoire of visual resources whose relative consistency over time has contributed to the creation and consolidation of a particular visual discourse representing European identity. This visual discourse, they argue, functions as a cross-lingual, cross-cultural mode of communication that has the capacity to manage the coexistence of difference and similarity, specificity and genericity, and the local and the global (Aiello and Thurlow 169). In practice, bidding parties for the status of ECoC make use of this visual repertoire in their bids and subsequent promotional material in order to portray an image of their city as distinctly local while simultaneously exhibiting a strong European/global

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dimension. In this visual discourse, depictions of cityscapes, fireworks, children, maps of Europe, cultural venues of neo-classical design, and collages/group photographs of people giving the appearance of diversity are the most enduring markers of a localized European identity. Among these, recurring depictions of cityscapes, architectural structures (particularly those of neo-classical design), and maps (in which the city in question is highlighted) are placed center stage when it comes to visualizing a European identity. The “common cultural area” that the ECoC scheme aims to foster thus tends to be visually exercised and subsequently practiced in urban settings.

While certainly reiterating a great many elements of the visual discourse specified by Aiello and Thurlow, Bodø2024’s bid diverges from it in a few significant ways. Chief among these are the depictions of imposing natural landscapes that stand in for the expected urban streetscapes. The bid’s cover page, for instance, stands in stark contrast to the stylized city skylines discerned by Aiello and Thurlow in its depiction of a juxtaposition of mountain tops morphed into a single mountain chain (Figures 2 and 3). A similar contrast can be observed between Figures 4 and 5, in which the bird’s eye perspective of an urban streetscape unfolding before two onlookers is replaced by a depiction of two trekkers traversing a mountainous archipelago. The neo-classical concert hall typical of European “high culture” is, in its turn, substituted by images of concerts and performances taking place outside in “spectacular and sublime landscapes” (Figures 6 and 7). Furthermore, the midnight sun, as seen in Figures 2, 4, and 6, can be read as replacing the visual resource of firework imagery. As the midnight sun emulates the bright and colorful light scheme of a firework display, invoking a sense of celebration as well as exhibiting a nod toward an anticipated victory in the competition (Aiello and Thurlow 154), the image retains the signifying essence of fireworks while simultaneously exhibiting a distinct local flare.

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Figure 2. The cover page of Bodø’s

application (Bodø2024 1).

Figure 3. Example of cityscape in the header of

Patras (Greece) as ECoC in 2006 as presented by Aiello and Thurlow (153).

Figure 4. Hike in Valnesfjord

offering a mountainscape as an alternative to cityscape

(Bodø2024 37).

Figure 5. Example of cityscape in a

brochure promoting Kassel (Germany) as ECOC as presented by Aiello and Thurlow (153).

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These divergences can be read as effecting a subtle transition to a visual discourse featuring essentialized and widely circulated motifs that signify a distinct Arctic locality. While there are also some images of urban streetscapes in the bid that seem to support Aiello and Thurlow’s argument in a more straightforward way, it is the depictions of natural landscapes that take precedence in shaping the image of Bodø and the surrounding region of Nordland’s material, and by extension cultural, environment. However, following Aiello and Thurlow’s distinction between content (what is presented) and presentation (how it is presented), it is clear that whereas the content of the images in Bodø’s bid may be different, the way in which they are presented maintains a remarkable likeness to the aforementioned visual repertoire of the ECoC. Bodø2024’s visual content thus effectively re-frames an Arctic landscape as European by adhering to and manipulating the visual discourse that the ECoC scheme gave rise to.

Out of all the bids’ images, only a handful depicts Bodø’s built environment. One of these depictions, titled “Contrasts” (Figure 8), is illustrative of some of the primary characteristics of Arctic urbanism. As Torill Nyseth observes, “most of the population growth [in the Arctic] occurs in urban centers with distinct borders. They are like small urban spots in

Figure 6. The festival Trevarefabrikken

at Henningsvær (Bodø2024 18).

Figure 7. Example of a concert hall

reflecting notions of European ‘high culture’ as presented by Aiello and Thurlow (157).

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the wilderness, with practically no suburban areas and sparsely populated surroundings” (63). Accordingly, “Contrasts” presents the reader with an urban streetscape featuring what one can assume to be a combination of residential and public buildings. Composed in a central perspective, the image takes as its focal point the harbor and the rugged green hills of the archipelago that lie beyond the street itself. Despite the urban fore- and middle ground making up the majority of the frame, the image utilizes the street’s perspective to invite the reader to look beyond the confined space of the city. True to its title, the shaded street with its grey cobble stones sharply contrasts with the blue waters of the harbor and the greenery of the archipelago basking in sunlight. Thus, the image visually underscores a close proximity to unbuilt environments while also inadvertently signaling the abrupt end and the small scale of urban settlements in the Arctic. Significantly, while the street is deserted, the sailboat occupying the very center of the composition features the only human activity in the image, thus destabilizing notions of the urban as the center of human activity.

Figure 8. “Contrasts”

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The bid’s visual content also reflects another core element of Arctic urbanism – decentralization. Flipping through its pages, the reader will encounter images of both built and natural environments in Træna, Henningsvær, Sørvågen, Valberg, Kjærringøy, and other locations far removed from Bodø itself. As explained in the bid’s introduction, “decentralisation has been a key driver of our cultural tradition, and clearly it has been a part of the politics of our close partner, Nordland County, of which Bodø is the capital” (Bodø2024 6). As Bodø is indisputably situated as the “capital” of the program, other regional centers are therefore heavily featured throughout the bid as equally significant stages for the program’s cultural projects and events.

The project War Travels is particularly illustrative of Bodø2024’s decentralization strategy. Following “Nordlandsbanen,” the railway line covering the 798-kilometre stretch from Trondheim to Bodø, the project makes an explicit appeal to a shared European history through recourse to the Second World War, incorporating “current European themes” by tying the war narrative to the political climate of contemporary Europe as similarly characterized by rising nationalism. While not exclusive to urbanized centers, the railway project does perpetuate an emphasis on urbanized settlements in moving from town to town. Significantly, War Travels also brings attention to other regional centers, explicitly mentioning Majavatn, Mo I Rana, and Narvik as locations of particular relevance to the northern Norwegian war narrative.4 In carrying through the theme of decentralization, the project destabilizes the idea of the “hub” in favor of a more horizontal network of smaller urbanized settlements.

Taking the idea of decentralization to the extreme, the project European Cabins of

Culture puts the tried and tested bond between notions of Europeanness and the urban in the

4_{The northern Norwegian war narrative referenced in the bid is centered around historical events that took place}

in Nordland during and shortly after Nazi-Germany’s occupation of Norway (1940-1945). These include: the Battle of Narvik, the treatment of Soviet cemeteries after the war, the various operations carried out by the Norwegian resistance movement, and the story of the Soviet prisoners whose forced labor built several stretches of the Nordlandsbanen railway.

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ECoC initiative to the test. In this project, audiences, both locals and visitors, will be invited to tourist cabins far removed from more densely populated urban centers. Building on Norwegian hiking culture and in collaboration with the Norwegian Trekking Association, the program aims to assign a coherent European theme to a selected number of cabins throughout the county:

European menu in the pantry, adding alternatives to our trusted, but not-so-progressive waffle with sour cream and jam. European exhibitions expressing the connections of the given area. And concerts, talks, forums, whatever you could and could not imagine taking place in a cabin you can only reach by a three-hour hike. (Bodø2024 33)

While what is meant to constitute a European identity is left vague and non-descript, as illustrated by the generic reference to a “European menu,” the European dimension is nonetheless attributed to, or inscribed in, locales and settings far removed from the city. In a similar fashion, concerts, talks, and forums, which in the larger context of the bid can be read as commonplace constituents of the vibrant, cosmopolitan city, signal the projecting of the “European” dimension onto unconventional spaces, at least by ECoC standards.

To sum up, Bodø2024’s Arctic strategy presents itself in the bid’s departure from commonplace notions of the urban capital. By emphatically situating Bodø in the Arctic, projecting themes of decentralization, and highlighting the relevance of small-scale urban settlements, the bid challenges what we know and how we tend to think about what urbanity means (Nyseth 59). At the same time, it affirms Bodø’s foothold in the Arctic region through recourse to widely circulating Arctic visual resources. This is particularly evident in the bid’s highlighting of non-descript mountainscapes, open waters, and the midnight sun – resources that visually signify distinctly, yet non-specific, Arctic phenomena. In this regard, Bodø’s bid does not de-exotify the Arctic. In the following sub-section, I will move from a focus on the bid’s portrayal of the physical geography of Bodø and its Arctic environs to examining its representation of lived human experience in the Arctic.

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In Tune with Nature

Central to Bodø2024’s claim to an Arctic identity is the so-called concrete and personal “awareness” it asserts Arctic people have of their environment – an awareness that intimately connects nature, culture, and economy. The affinity between Arctic residents and nature is affirmed by the bid’s visual material. In contrast to the representations of cityscapes that circumvent the specificity of human faces in favor of a European genericity (Aiello and Thurlow 153) and to the desolate landscapes portrayed in climate narratives, the natural landscapes depicted in Bodø’s bid extensively feature human presence. Throughout, human bodies and activities are portrayed either as the primary subject or as staffage in the images’ composition. In the latter case, the human figures are not the primary subject of the composition, but rather serve as an indication of scale with regards to the scenery that surrounds them (Figure 9). In those images where human bodies are the central focus, they tend to be placed in the fore- or middle ground of the image, leaving the natural backdrop out of focus and blurred, in addition to being cropped to fit the human subject (Figure 10). Both types of depictions visually emphasize lived human experience in the Arctic’s landscape.

Figure 9. The Sauna Pub at Træna (Bodø2024

70).

Figure 10. Contemporary

dancer, Alain Sodney (Bodø2024 47).

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As part of the artistic theme “Fish and Ships,” the bid further highlights traditional industries of the past and present, particularly fishery and the associated fish trade, to emphasize the intrinsic relationship between nature and economy in the high north (Figures 11 and 12). The climate crisis, the bid writes with urgency, has “a direct impact on a way of life that for more than 10,000 years was the basis of existence for humans living in close connection with their environment and a coastal culture” (Bodø2024 61). As reflected in the figures presented in this chapter, imagery pertaining to Bodø and Nordland’s “coastal culture,” make up a significant proportion of the bid’s visual material. In the description of the program’s artistic themes, the bid further states that Nordland

is highly modern and influenced by its traditions, and at the same time rooted in the traditions of the specific Arctic narrative of the Vikings, through the indigenous Sami culture, the fish trade through the Hansa period, the struggle of existence of the fish farmers and the pioneers of the modern age with its tradesmen, industrialists, and workers. In this narrative, the struggle for existence in a harsh environment and a rough climate has been a leitmotif. (Bodø2024 62)

Figure 11. Seaweed harvesting at

Træna (Bodø2024 27)

Figure 12. Traditional trade boat

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Contrary to the by now standard narrative of the Arctic in which the region is portrayed as less than desirable with regards to human settlement, Bodø2024, as shown in the above quote, insists on a long-standing human presence in the region, albeit in spite of harsh conditions. Significantly, the bid also invokes the presence of Europe’s only indigenous people – the Sami. The bid is quick to point out that Nordland is home to all three official Sami languages (6), and later goes on to claim that “Sami history and identity is an important part of [Bodø and Nordland’s] cultural heritage” (54). While the bid takes important steps in recognizing the need for increased inclusion of indigenous peoples (and in doing so responds to the ECoC prerequisite of promoting cultural diversity in Europe), it also typecasts Sami identity as primarily oriented toward “living and producing on terms with nature” (Bodø2024 28). This is particularly evident in the description of the artistic theme “Art of Nature,” as reiterated under the European Dimension of the bid:

The Sami attitude towards nature is based upon the virtue of “leave no trace”. In the last few decades, traditional, indigenous, and local knowledge has increasingly highlighted the discourse on climate challenges and the changes in our environment. In the Sami tradition, knowledge about nature, sustainability and nature’s behaviour, often linked to nature’s spirituality, has been passed down orally through generations, through stories, music, legends and folklore. We are looking forward to sharing this knowledge and these cultural expressions with our European audience and friends. (62)

In this quote, Sami identity is associated with a deep-rooted connection to nature that positions the Sami as potential guides and authoritative voices in addressing questions of climate change. Moreover, as the Sami are conceived as the Arctic people par excellence, directing the reader’s attention toward them also serves the purpose of strengthening Bodø’s ties to the Arctic. This amounts to an othering of the Sami that can also be observed in the use of pronouns in the above quotation, as the Sami do not seem part of the “we” that is speaking in the bid. Similarly, the

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city, arguably the most obvious trace of human intervention, is rendered alien to the Sami virtue of “leave no trace,” thus positioning the Sami as inclined to a way of life that excludes the possibility of urban settlement. As such, the reader is presented with a portrayal of what Steinberg et al. refers to as “anthropological caricatures” of indigenous people in the Arctic as “mystically connected with – and a part of – the nature that surrounds them” (142). The exclusion of the Sami from the urban milieu is visually underscored in the bid’s portrayal of the Norwegian-Sami mezzo-soprano Adrian Angelico, who is not only shown wearing a traditional Sami folk costume but placed in generic and non-descript natural surroundings (Figure 13).

Through image and text, then, the bid portrays the inhabitants of Nordland, whether indigenous or not, as a people that through centuries of history have fostered a culture that might serve as a role model for today’s Europe in addressing questions of climate change – a society “in tune with nature” (Bodø2024 14). Narratively, the bid explicitly links Bodø and Nordland’s

Figure 13. The Norwegian-Sami

mezzo-soprano, Adrian Angelico (Bodø2024 77).