Melting Ice, Empty Lands, and the New Imagery of an ‘Opening’ Arctic
Ragnhild Freng Dale
The ‘opening’ of the Arctic is nothing new: it has been ‘opened’ several times in the past, in scrambles for resources and in spiritual searches. This essay sets out to discuss some of these changes and ‘openings’ from the perspective of indigenous populations living on a continent commonly perceived as vast, open and desolate. Historically, there has been a tendency to either romanticise Arctic residents, or dismiss them as primitive and old fashioned. These are the ideas that create the backdrop for the current influx of financial investment, and I will focus on the Canadian Arctic to untangle some of the interactions that have shaped these ideas. Using the tropes of mapping and navigation, I take a brief historical dive into the conceptual imaginary of Photo: NASA/Kathryn Hansen
administrators and developers that allows a perceived ‘opening’ of the region to take place. We may yet have much to learn from how Northern peoples live with change in an environment where uncertainty and predictability play very different roles than we commonly assume. Mirages of mapping and ‘empty’ regions Before we go on to examine the most recent ‘opening,’ a geographical and historical perspective can be informative. In 1842, the naval officer and geographer Wilkes was on trial for ‘immoral mapping’ in Antarctica, having mapped out land that was only a mirage; a phantom displacement of landscape that occurs in the region through a refraction of light on 55