The Changing Environment of the North: Cultural Representations and Uses of Water

The North, or the Arctic, has been regarded as a periphery upon which the centre has reflected itself. In the age of climate change and the exploitation of natural resources, it has become a new centre. The project contends that both human experiences and natural spaces are part of the Arctic reality, and both should be analysed with the tools and methods provided by interdisciplinary humanist studies (history, literary theory, linguistics, and environmental studies).

The project covers the area between the Baltic Sea and the Arctic Ocean. It highlights questions of power and representation, the relationship between real and imaginary spaces, and utopian and dystopian visions concerning the North. .

The project studies the history and the factual and fictional realities of the North with water as its touchpoint. The project uses the concept of aquagraphy, which includes an analytical means of exploring multiple northern waters turned into glaciers, ice, snow, and floods.  The research makes use of documentaries, interviews, films, literature and photographs as sources of new conversation and dialogue about the Arctic.

We need new ways of discussing and representing that changing environment. Natural sciences, politics, economics, and technology and the strategies they produce have not focused enough on the changing conditions of human and non-human lives in the North. A more differentiated knowledge of the environment is required to anticipate and face the risks concerning the regions sustainability.

We will investigate multiple Norths, covering Finnish, Scandinavian, Russian, and Anglo-American representations. We will equally contribute to the cultural knowledge of the northern ecosystems mediated by the ethnolinguistic documentation of discourses about water and the role of water landscapes in former and current cultural practices among northern indigenous people.

Academy of Finland

Professor / Consortium PI

Arja Rosenholm

arja.rosenholm [at] uta.fi

+358 50 377 4840

 

Professor / Consortium PI

Markku Lehtimäki

markku.lehtimaki [at] uef.fi