Women Contemporary Arctic Narrative

Notwithstanding the gradual intensification of contacts across the different parts of the circumpolar North, research on gender in the Arctic is still a fragmented field – not the least because of language barriers. The four cases presented here, all from the Far North of Russia, are intended to complement research on gender in North America and the Nordic countries. We also hope they will encourage wider use of feminist approaches in geography and social sciences. After a first overview of how gender emerged as a topic of study in the circumpolar North, the introduction will focus on gender-specific forms of mobility and immobility. Next, gender will be discussed in relation to identity and intersectionality under colonial and post-colonial conditions. Thereafter, Feminist Political Ecology and other theoretical directions are portrayed as theoretical approaches to studying gendered economies. Such contextualization of the study of gender in the Arctic prepares the ground for short summaries of the four papers in this special issue, to be concluded by a brief statement about future directions of research. Particularly the concept of intersectionality is favored as a useful basis for examining gender, indigeneity, and economic differences.

https://www.womenartistsinthearctic.com, 2021

This exhibition investigates the uniqueness of women's art about the Arctic and aims to see if there is a different way-a feminine way-of investigating our moral relationship to nature and an ecosystem as unique and challenging as that of the Arctic.

Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos, 2019

In contrast to the rich scholarship investigating male auteur directors and male polar explorers, "Women Arctic Explorers: In Front Of And Behind The Camera" examine some of the many women filmmakers who have made films in and about the Arctic since the 1920s. Largely absent in film history, we historicize the film production of these women film explorers with respect to their contemporary moment, but also in relation to dominant modes of cinema scholarship and Arctic studies. In this chapter we use the umbrella term “women film explorers” to account for women explorers who are themselves filmmakers, women explorers who were documented by others on film, and staged or fictionalized accounts of women explorers in the cinema. We exemplify with a number of women film explorers who contribute to critical moments in the history of Arctic explorer and ethnographic filmmaking, focusing on two periods: the 1920s-1930s and the 1960s-1970s. Examples include privately shot films for scientific purposes by American Arctic explorer Louise Boyd; Pathé newsreel coverage of Mary Stafford Peary’s travel to northern Greenland; fiction film featuring German Leni Riefenstahl on a rescue mission in S.O.S. Eisberg (Arnold Fanck, Germany/USA, 1933) and French actress Juliette Binoche as Josephine Peary in Endless Night (Nadie quiere la noche, Isabel Coixet, Spain/France/Bulgaria, 2015); commissioned ethnographic documentary by Dane Jette Bang and Swede and UK-based Mai Zetterling; and independent Scottish ethnographer Jenny Gilbertson filming in the high Canadian Arctic. We conclude by gesturing toward recent self-reflexive reactions to some of the recurring tropes of Arctic and polar explorer representation through postcolonial video art as exemplified by Greenlander Pia Arke.

This article uses historical travel writing by Anglo-European Women to investigate the construction of gendered geographies in the Far North. Applying an interdisciplinary approach that combines history, literary analysis and gender studies, the paper examines the gendered aspects of travel, and the intersectionality of gender, class and race. Using examples from two published travel accounts and personal archives, the paper will demonstrate the historical processes of gender differences and representations, as well as capture the intersectionality of literature and the construction of place in real, imaginary and symbolic terms.

ARCTIC, 2000

Studies in Travel Writing, 2016

Scandinavian-Canadian Studies

This edited anthology showcases many of the major contributions from the three-year international interdisciplinary Arctic Modernities research project, led by Anka Ryall and based at The Arctic University of Norway (UiT) with major funding support by the Research Council of Norway. The striking image on the book cover-a woman in bright red Sámi attire standing on a trampoline in a seemingly desolate field of snow-provides a fitting invitation to explore this series of fourteen articles, which both challenge traditional and dominant discourses surrounding the Arctic, and provide valuable new perspectives related to gender and indigeneity. The articles challenge both long-held and more recently constructed stereotypes and oversimplified representations of this complex and dynamic region by drawing on historical, literary, cultural, and aesthetic perspectives. In their engaging introduction, editors Heidi Hansson and Anka Ryall, both well-known literary scholars who work extensively with Arctic texts, unpack the cover image to frame their discussion of the ways in which the Arctic and modernity have been conceptualized and defined in various times, places, and spaces, focusing on the intersection of these notions and some of the seeming paradoxes and contradictions that result. Hansson and Ryall position the articles in this anthology within the following Arctic discourse framework, which is reflected in the book's subtitle: "the Arctic understood as threatened environment, the Arctic perceived as the exotic opposite of modernity and the Arctic described as the everyday, lived reality of its inhabitants" (4, italics mine). The editors also note that a hypothesis common to many of these contributions is "the Arctic may be seen as a stark embodiment of the paradoxes of modernity" (8). The geographic and thematic foci of the articles span the circumpolar north-from Russia and the former Soviet Union to northern Canada to the northern reaches of the Nordic region, including Sápmi, Greenland, and Svalbard-with Canadian and Norwegian content being particularly well represented. The areas of expertise of the contributors, all of whom are connected to European and North American universities, range from literature and culture (comparative, Nordic, English, Russian, and Slavic) to art history, Arctic history, and cross-cultural, gender, film, and media studies. By presenting such a wide range of perspectives, Hansson and Ryall effectively highlight the broad and timely range of work related to the Arctic and modernity taking place in the field of humanities. Arctic Modernities also demonstrates the importance of paying attention to often understudied perspectives and areas such as "the impact of … air travel, industry, tourism, urgent environmental concerns and changing gender

2017

Current Research (2016-18)Project title: Women in the Arctic, 1818-2018The project Women in the Arctic examines the intercultural aspects of how women are represented in circumpolar societies. It ...

Iceland's Arctic Council Chairmanship and the Arctic Council Sustainable Development Working Group, with the Icelandic Arctic Cooperation Network, the Icelandic Directorate for Equality, and the Stefansson Arctic Institute., 2021

Gender equality in the Arctic is highly relevant to the agenda and role of the Arctic Council (the Council) and its Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG), which have emphasised gender equality in previous projects and initiatives. The importance of issues of gender and diversity has become increasingly evident, the latest example being Iceland's emphasis on gender issues during its Arctic Council Chairmanship. Examples of previous work and valuable input in this field under the Council's auspices include: the 2002 Taking Wing Conference in Inari that focused on the themes of women and work, gender and self-determination among Indigenous Peoples, and violence against women; the first edition of the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR) in 2004, which included a chapter on gender; and the second edition of the AHDR, published in 2014, in which gender issues were mainstreamed into all chapters as appropriate. We would like to thank the Editorial Committee for their guidance and direction throughout the process and the SDWG's Social, Economic, and Cultural Expert Group (SECEG) for the time and effort they have put into reviewing and advising at different stages of the process. We would also like to thank our Youth Advisory Group for their valuable input and reviews. There would be no report without our lead authors, to whom we are eternally grateful for their hard work in researching, coordinating, and writing the chapters and for their patience and engagement in endless meetings and consultations. Thank you also to all the many contributors to the chapters, without whom this report would not have been what it is.