Arctic Discourses

"Arctic Discourses" is a project at the Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education at the University of Tromsø, co-financed by the Research Council of Norway and the University of Tromsø.

Arctic Discourses at 79° North. Network members on an expedition to Spitsbergen, visiting Pyramida.

– A collaboration between literary scholars in English, Norwegian, Comparative Literature, Sami, French, Russian and German at the Department of Culture and Literature. Active collaborators in Sweden, at Umeå University; in Denmark, at Copenhagen University; in the Netherlands, at Amsterdam University, in Austria, at Vienna Museum; and in Britain, at University College London.

– The project leadership is shared between Anka Ryall (English), Johan Schimanski (Comparative Literature) and Henning Howlid Wærp (Norwegian). 

• project description (in Norwegian)
• programme: events
• subprojects: articles, books, dissertations (in Norwegian)
• publications (in Norwegian)
• reading group
• positions
• other projects and cooperation partners
• conferences
• resources (in Norwegian) 

Accounts of arctic or sub-arctic areas and the people living there represent a voluminous material produced both within these areas and in other parts of the world, and in many languages and many different genres, both fictional and non-fictional. These accounts might have been more or less in keeping with arctic realities, and some are purely imaginative or speculative, but in any case they constitute an important element of the historical perception of the Arctic and the far north. Together they represent what we may call arctic discourses.

The purpose of the project is to investigate arctic discourses in the post-romantic era, that is, after about 1840 until the present. The perspective is textual, and the main focus will be on 1) arctic discursive strategies in fictional or poetic texts and 2) literary discursive strategies in non-fictional or semi-fictional accounts of the Arctic or northern world, such as scientific texts, travel and exploration narratives and historical documents.

The project was launched in 2005, with an international symposium, but it will run formally from 2006 through 2009. Two doctoral fellowships (of four years each) and one post-doctoral fellowship (three years) will be funded by the project grant. In addition, one four-year doctoral fellow, who is working on a dissertation on North-West-Russian fiction and received funding in 2003, has been incorporated into the project. One book project consisting of articles (in Norwegian) by the participating scholars and the following two English book projects will also be funded by the project:

Heidi Hansson and Anka Ryall, ”Northern Genders: Travel Writing and the Borders of the European Self” 

Johan Schimanski and Ulrike Spring, ”European Discourses of the Arctic in the Reception of the Austrian-Hungarian Polar Expedition: Vienna – Tromsø – Franz Josefs Land, 1872–1874.”

Project leaders:
Henning Howlid Wærp
Johan Schimanski