Queering Polar History in Tromsø

Queering Polar History, an exhibit at the Polar Museum in Tromsø, just ended this past June. Sadly, I only became aware of it recently, though I was in Tromsø twice during the three years it was on. My focus in Tromsø both times was library research on Sámi folktales, and I didn’t have much time to revisit museums I’d already been to over the years. I also recalled the Polar Museum, in a remodeled wooden warehouse down on one of the city wharves, as being a little too taxidermic for my taste.

 But on October 7, 2022, a temporary exhibit opened in connection with Norway’s Queer Culture Year, a joint initiative from the Queer Archive at the University of Bergen, the Norwegian National Museum, and the Norwegian National Library. This was to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalization of male homosexuality in Norway. The repeal of section 213 of the Norwegian Penal Code marked the beginning of a greater openness about gay life, literature, and activism, which would transform Norwegian society in the coming years. 

The Polar Museum is in many ways an unlikely venue for a thematic exploration of gender and sexuality in Northern Norway and the polar regions, particularly the Arctic. Due to the preponderance of male explorers, polar exploration has usually been associated with a certain kind of obsessive, fur-clad hypermasculinity, exemplified by Norwegians Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen and the many other men who participated in various late nineteenth and twentieth century races to the poles. 

Curators and cultural studies researchers at the Polar Museum, Silje Gaupseth and Marit Anne Hauan, decided to take another look at material the museum might already have in its archives and at other newspaper clippings, fiction, artifacts, and urban legends suggested by external contributors with a knowledge of queer history. The result was an expanded look—in the exhibit itself and in a large format booklet with seven articles and an interview accompanying the exhibit—at the many dimensions of queer history. 

One of the more intriguing articles focuses on a photograph from the Norwegian South Pole Expedition of 1910-12. It was snapped on the famous Fram, captained by Roald Amundsen, as the ship crossed the equator on December 14, 1910, en route to the South Pole. A celebration is in progress among the crew. A bit surprisingly, it includes what seems to be a woman in a short white costume, sitting on the lap of a crew member, with one arm around his neck and the other hand stroking his cheek. Second mate Hjalmar Fredrik Gertsen had, with the help of the ship’s sailmaker, had spent the day transforming himself into a ballerina, writing later that “I was extremely cute...and I was flirted with a lot.” 

"The Equator Party," Fram 1910

In her fascinating article about this photograph, “A Few Square Metres of Leeway,” Gaupseth delves into the Anglo-American tradition of cross-dressing or “polar drag” aboard ship during performances, perhaps as a way of providing “a safe outlet for sexual tensions between the men on the expedition.” British officers had often been educated at schools where cross-dressing was encouraged in student theaters. After around 1920, such playful acting became more stigmatized as homosexual expression, but in 1910 it was alive and well on the Fram. 

 I was also captivated by Marit Anne Hauan’s article, “The Walrus—behavior among Arctic marine mammals that breaks the norms.” I mean, with a title like that, who wouldn’t wonder about what walruses are getting up to? Plenty, as it turns out. The Arctic walrus lives along the eastern coast of Greenland, and on the archipelagos of Svalbard and Franz Josef Land, and east along the Barents and Kara Sea. These large and magnificent animals, as well as their brethren, the Pacific walrus up in Alaska, were hunted almost to extinction. 

Walruses are very social animals, as you can notice in the wild and in documentary videos and still photography. They always seem to be piled up together. Turns out, these are not mixed groups. Except for a short mating season in the winter, the male and female populations live separately. Although their mating and reproduction habits have been studied thoroughly by marine biologists, little research has taken place on what might be going on during the other ten months of the year. The sexual behavior of male walruses has received some attention in the past by Bruce Bagemihl, who is also the author of Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, published in 1999. Apparently most male walruses engage in same-gender activity: making particular sounds associated with flirting, while masturbating their erect penis with their front flippers. Sometimes they rub up against the anal areas of other males. 

This was all news to me, though I was not surprised to find that research on female walruses and their desires is still regrettably lacking. 

The curators also asked the internationally feted queer Sámi photographer Gjert Rognli to create “interventions” at the Polar Museum. I am a great fan of his magical, often eerily lit nature photography, but the small photographs in the booklet of objects he contributed to the Queering Polar History exhibit didn’t give me a good sense of either his personal art style or what exactly they offered the viewer in the museum. On the other hand, his interview with Hauan is moving and perceptive about his own vision of queer art and his role in a “double minority position—Sámi and queer.” 

Gjert Rognli                                                                                          

 

 

Save the Repparfjord!

 

Protest site at Repparfjord, Norway, July 2025

This summer, on the site of a Canadian-financed copper mine on the mountain above the Repparfjord in Northern Norway, an encampment has gone up to protest the current construction and its ruinous consequences for Sámi reindeer grazing lands and the fjord near Hammerfest. You can read about the encampment here in a recent issue of the Barents Observer and see an Instagram video on the protest made by Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen, a young singer and activist affiliated with Norway’s environmental protection organization Natur og Ungdom (the youth movement of Friends of the Earth Norway). Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen asks everyone to write to the Canadian investment company Hartree to demand they stop funding this project, which is taking place without the consent of the Sámi parliament and many local Sámi in the area. 

Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen

For more background on the project, read on: 

The Repparfjord, or Riehppovuotna, is a National Salmon Fjord; the rivers that feed into the fjord from the mountains above are some of the world’s most pristine waterways, fished by the local Sámi for generations, and also beloved by fly fishermen from abroad. The fjord is a spawning ground for salmon, for cod, pollack, and other species. This marine environment was first threatened in the 1970s when the copper ore Nussir Mine in the mountains first came into operation with the promise of jobs for the nearby municipality of Kvalsund, a community of Sámi, Kven, and Norwegians located at the western end of the Repparfjord. Because of the falling price of copper, the open pit mine was only in existence from 1972-1978, but it was long enough for the company, Folldal Verk, to dispose of tailings (crushed rock, water, and trace amounts of metals or additives used in the processing) in the Repparfjord. 

This was done without consulting the local population and the effects of the dumping were never monitored. But copper is now in great demand in the manufacture of electronics, and the amount of ore under the surface of two mountains above the Repparfjord, Ulveryggen (Gumpenjunni) and Steinfjellet (Nussir) is estimated at seventy-two million tons. Although Norway has a long history of copper mining farther south, in Røros and Løkken in the Trondelag area, the ore deposits around the Repparfjord are the largest known deposits in Norway. A renewed look at the Nussir brownfields began around 2005 with the establishment of an ASA (a public limited company), and some years of test drilling and raising money followed. The issue of what to do with the waste should mining be resumed was thoroughly discussed, but the plan was essentially the same as in the 1970s. The tailings would again spew into the Repparfjord, though this time the waste would flow through a pipeline from the plant to the fjord bottom. Dumping waste into waterways and the ocean has long been a human practice, but it’s a surprising fact that Norway is the only country in Europe and one of the last nation states to allow mining waste to be discarded in the ocean. 

The Repparfjord

The mine was approved in 2019, with the goal of operating the world’s first fully electrified mine with zero CO2 emissions, but it has been bitterly fought ever since, with protests at the site driven by Sámi activists and other environmentalists. In 2020, the German company Aurubis, one of the world’s largest copper smelters, provisionally agreed to buy raw materials from Nussir ASA. A year later they terminated the memorandum of understanding after opposition, citing concerns about the effect on wildlife and the livelihoods of the Sámi in the area. The tailings were not the main issue; here it was the effect of the mine itself on local reindeer populations. Nussir ASA, in fighting for the mine, has insisted that the mitigation measures they propose will work, but most of those mitigation measures are on land. The Sámi Parliament, which in Norway is given the right of consultation but never the final say in any dispute over the environment, disagreed with Nussir ASA. The suggested mitigations were not sufficient. 

There are conflicting ways of reading Norwegian laws and how they are to be interpreted with regard to Sámi rights. For instance, the Minerals Act of 2009 gives little agency to Sámi concerns, while the Natural Diversity Act, passed that same year, states that the purpose of the act “is to protect biological, geological and landscape diversity and ecological processes through conservation and sustainable use, and in such a way that the environment provides a basis for human activity, culture, health and well-being, now and in the future, including a basis for Sami culture.” There is currently a new Minerals Act, scheduled to go into effect in 2026, that speaks of “Extending the scope of the current special rules relating to Sámi interests to cover the entire traditional Sámi area.” But this revised Minerals Act is also focused on streamlining permits and encouraging production, in line with the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act of 2024. What some critics, Sámi and non-Sámi, have noticed is how little say the Sámi Parliament has over the marine environment. While the rights of land-based reindeer herders are often threatened, there has been progress at times in finding compromises and/or limiting damage. But the rights of the traditional Sea Sámi to clean waters and a healthy marine ecology seem to be more nebulous when it comes to the law. 

Hammerfest protest against dumping in the fjord

Although a number of people in the Kvalsund municipality are in favor of the mine because of the jobs involved and protests and continued pushback from the Sámi Parliament have slowed the process, the plans for the mine haven’t been given up. As of 2025, Blue Moon Metals of Canada is working with Nussir ASA to pursue mining operations. The Sámi Parliament President, Silje Karine Muotka, has been outspoken about the Nussir mine and about a “green shift” that depends on extractive processes that harm the environment and have an outsize effect on Indigenous populations in Norway. “It isn’t a question of economics, it’s a values question, a moral question about what we want to leave future generations. I do recognize that we need materials for new technologies – so we should look for better projects that don’t harm the environment and destroy our culture.” 

Sámi Parliament President, Silje Karine Muotka

 

University of Minnesota Press Celebrates 100 Years of Publishing

Warm congratulations to the University of Minnesota Press, which is celebrating its founding July 16,  1925. Publishers Weekly has an article about the press that highlights some of its achievements and goals publishing both trade books and scholarly titles. I've read many of their titles over the years, everything from cookbooks to mysteries and natural history memoirs, and so many of them have been memorable. 

I'm pleased and grateful that Minnesota has published a number of my own books, both translations and original titles, like From Lapland to Sápmi and The Palace of the Snow Queen. The people who work there are dedicated to quality, professional, collaborative, and truly kind, and I know I'm not the only author who feels blessed to be part of their list. The covers and interiors are always beautiful and the production details perfect. 

 

Congrats Minnesota, for managing to thrive for a century in a publishing world that's so often challenging for independent and university presses! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Women Write About Svalbard: Christiane Ritter, Cecilia Blomdahl, and Line Nagell Ylvisåker

 

Christiane and Hermann Ritter in front of their house on Svalbard 

I’ve been dreaming these days about the polar regions, the Arctic in particular.  In the midst of attempting to digest a good deal of difficult news, which seems to fly at us from all directions but mainly emanates from Washington D.C., I don’t want to forget about climate change. The melting glaciers of Greenland, Svalbard, and Antarctica concern us all. Long after this sinister administration is gone, we’ll be living through the consequences of denying scientific research.

I'm thinking about the environment as I work on my current project, a memoir about my travels up in Arctic Norway last summer. But I've also been paying attention to those who have traveled and lived up in the high North. I’ve been researching the Norwegian explorers, Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen; the Sámi members of expeditions to Greenland and Antarctica; Tromsø’s role as an Arctic research center. And then, of course, there’s Svalbard. I visited the archipelago briefly once decades ago when I worked on the Norwegian coastal steamer one summer, and the memory of the polar ice north of Ny Ålesund is still powerful.

Which brings me to two books I’ve recently read, and another I've only read about, written by women who lived or are living on Svalbard. Books that couldn’t be more different in scope, format, and tone, but that taken together say something about the ways in which woman have experienced the North and also projected themselves into it. 

A Woman in the Polar Night, by Christiane Ritter, is a translation from the German that originally came out in 1938 (in 1954 in England). This short memoir has stayed in print in her native Austria ever since but was a forgotten classic when Pushkin Press reissued it in 2024. It’s the account of a year that Ritter, then in her early thirties, spent with her husband, Hermann, a naval officer who went to Svalbard on a scientific expedition and stayed to become a trapper and hunter. He telegraphed her to come and join him and in 1934 she did, leaving behind her teenage daughter and the comforts of life in Vienna.

Ritter tells us almost nothing about that old life. From the moment she arrives, she is fully present in the overwhelming world of Svalbard, which at first shocks her with its emptiness and desolation, even at summer’s tail end: “The boundlessly broad foreland, a sea of stone, stones stretching up to the crumbling mountains and down to the crumbling shore, an arid picture of death and decay.”

But as the months progress, her experience changes. The stove is primitive and sooty; the menu relies too heavily on oily seal meat, the polar night descends unmercifully. While the Aurora and the stars whirl around dark sky, the shack can feel alternately cozy and claustrophobic. Ritter feels at times small and afraid, especially when left for days alone in the cabin she and Hermann share with a younger Norwegian, Karl, when the men are out hunting. But if her descriptions of the effort of daily existence are precise and sometimes humorous, her writing about the mountains, fjords and especially the ice, the snow, and the changing light as autumn becomes winter and winter becomes spring begins at times to rise to an exultation that we commonly associate with saints in the grip of an ecstatic vision of God and the universe. At one point Ritter displays hints of an Arctic madness—she becomes, Karl’s brief formulation, rar, the Norwegian word for “strange.”

Some have called A Woman in the Polar Night a feminist text, and there’s some truth to that. There’s more talk of domesticity and its value in bare circumstances than of conquering the wilderness; there is also an ecologist mindset that might remind us of Susan Griffin’s Women and Nature and other core works of eco-feminism with their emphasis on interconnectedness. Ritter finds a kind of freedom in Svalbard from social expectations and civilization itself. The men, in fact, share the cooking, and she must pitch in with chopping up frozen meat and shoveling snow. But some of what Ritter experiences is the non-gendered self expanding to meet the extraordinary landscape and cosmos.

Swedish photographer Cecilia Blomdahl’s 2024 coffee table book, Life on Svalbard, couldn’t be more different in scope, format, and mood. A Woman in the Polar Night is austere and poetic; Christiane Ritter relies on her pen to create indelible imagery. There are only a few sketches and black and white photographs. She’s modest to a fault; we could wish we knew more about her. What kind of art does she make and how does she support herself? Why is her husband in Svalbard and is he ever coming home? What does she think about the political situation in Central Europe and the rise of National Socialism?

Blomdahl inhabits another world entirely, that of a content creator across multiple social media channels. She’s on Instagram, she’s on Tik-Tok, she’s on Facebook, and she’s on YouTube, where she’s made 500 videos of her life near the main town of Longyearbyen. One of them from a few years ago, explaining “THIS is why I live on a remote Arctic island with 3000 people and polar bears,” has garnered over 4 million views. Blomdahl came to Svalbard in 2016 to work in the hospitality field. She immediately took to the cold and extremes of light and dark over the course of the year. With her Norwegian boyfriend, initially a cook at the same hotel, she moved a short way outside Longyearbyen to a cabin with a view of seven glaciers. From there she discovered photography as a way of communicating with hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, who also dream of cold, remote places, but perhaps don’t actually want to go there. They would rather watch Blomdahl in snowsuits on her snowmobile, or in her long underwear reading a book, or in her swimsuit braving an icy dip. She’s often photographed from behind, staring at the landscape, her brown hair flowing, or sitting on the porch or inside the cabin, with a steaming cup of coffee, demonstrating hygge in the midst of wilderness. Svalbard is there, in full view, but as she says in one video, “Svalbard is a feeling, it’s a lifestyle, not just a place.” Her viewers write comments praising her positivity. They seem to love the combination of gentle reality show superimposed on a harsh but stunning northern landscape.

 

Life on Svalbard has many gorgeous photos but the English text is oddly flat. I believe she writes in English much as she speaks, with only a slight Swedish accent, using pedestrian phrases that come from the tourist industry. Blomdahl wants to convey the ineffable, but the words that come out only grasp vaguely in that direction. There is much that is “breathtaking” or that “takes your breath away.” And although there are also possible dangers—avalanches, walruses, polar bears—there are many domestic pleasures. Cecilie and Christoffer have GPS to find their way to even more remote cabins on the island of Spitzbergen. They get shipments from Ikea to remodel their kitchen. They visit with friends and drink coffee. They play with their dog Grim. With snowmobiles, cars, boats, wi-fi, and their vast audience, they are living a European lifestyle in a place that once was only for the toughest-minded survivalist.

 

Although Svalbard is one of the places most at risk in these times of climate change, and although much of the research that goes on in Longyearbyen and farther north at the research station in Ny Ålesund has to do with rapidly melting glaciers and warming seas, there’s nothing about that inconvenient truth in Life on Svalbard. We don’t learn much about the archipelago’s history as a whaling station or its mining operations, or about its connection with Norway and its political structure. It’s an innocuous book, with glorious visuals, but unreal somehow. Blomdahl mentions the presence of researchers but doesn’t explain what they are studying. The couple’s friends may also be from the hospitality field—after all, you have to have a job or an income to be allowed to stay in Svalbard—but mostly they are engaged in leisure activities. Don’t get me wrong, Cecilia Blomdahl’s photographs are striking, but they are oddly detached from the lives of most people on the archipelago.

Christiane Ritter’s book was written before an understanding of the effects of climate change on glaciers, but for Cecilia Blomdahl there’s really no excuse. After all, in 2015 a devastating avalanche hit Longyearbyen during a strong winter storm. Houses were damaged, people were evacuated temporarily, and one man was killed. The story of the avalanche and its aftermath are told in a 2020 book My World is Melting – Living with Climate Change in Svalbard, by the Norwegian journalist and longtime Svalbard resident, Line Nagell Ylvisåker, who is also the editor of Longyearbyen’s newspaper. Although the book was translated to English in 2022, that edition is only available on Svalbard itself. In lieu of my own take on the book, I offer for now a review I found online by a Dutch meteorologist, Daan van den Broek, who is based in Finland and travels often to Svalbard.