Exploring the cultures of the Arctic
As the Arctic continues to thaw under climate change, increasing attention is being drawn to the region. Disputes over resource extraction and territorial claims are growing amid global geopolitical tensions. Yet little focus has been placed on the cultures of the Arctic, and the forces that have shaped our understanding of them through history. “The Arctic has been constructed by actors from afar since, at least, the sixteenth century. This led to dominant representations of the region as cold, remote, hostile, difficult, ethereal and many other tropes,” explains Richard Powell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge. Many early European and American explorers and scientists knew it was inhabited. They relied upon indigenous people as guides, translators and cartographers. Yet despite this, a persistent framing arose of the Arctic as a ‘natural region’, absent of culture and people. Against this backdrop, the ARCTIC CULT project, which was funded by the European Research Council, was launched to investigate the reasons behind this cultural viewpoint. A multidisciplinary team of researchers explored how it arose through contacts between explorers of the region and indigenous people from the sixteenth century.
Global museum investigations
The project searched for texts, maps and cultural objects that were collected in the Arctic and shipped to museums and other institutions in cities around the world. The idea was to tease apart the influences on the Arctic owing to the rise of colonial museum cultures and Western modernity. The ARCTIC CULT project ran for seven years, and was carried out by a multilingual team of 10 members at archives, museums and libraries across Europe, North America and the Arctic. “We undertook work in sites such as Copenhagen, Berlin, Montreal, Pittsburgh, Nuuk and Qaanaaq, among many others,” says Powell. “We traced stories and objects across collections and between archives, making connections that had never been possible before,” he adds.
Uncovering links between modern scientific and indigenous ideas
The main finding from the project was how deeply ingrained this image of the Arctic is, and how it came to develop. “It was surprising, even to us, as to just how deeply reliant upon indigenous thoughts, practices and labours so much of our scientific and exploratory knowledge actually is,” remarks Powell. The research led to a series of publications in international peer-reviewed journals, detailing the links between colonial explorers and indigenous knowledge and cartography. The work of the project was also presented to the public through the launch of an exhibition, ‘Arctic Cultures: Collections and Imaginations’, which opened in January 2024 at the Polar Museum, in the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge.
Links to current political discourse
The project appears to have been particularly prescient in light of recent global discourse. “Even in the past month or so, parts of the Arctic, and specifically Greenland, have had their future talked about in the starkest terms,” says Powell. “Ironically, Greenland’s current Foreign Policy is subtitled: ‘Nothing about us, without us’. And yet, in recent days, claims have been made about the future ownership, economic resources and security of Greenland, with little knowledge about the place or people who live there,” he notes. This is, Powell explains, largely due to the dominant framing of the Arctic. “The outputs from the Arctic Cultures project are redressing this,” he adds.
Keywords
ARCTIC CULT, cultures, colonial, museums, natural, text, cartography, Greenland