Burgess Power Langshaw & Samuel Geisterfer

The Arctic is in dire circumstances. New research suggests that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could shut down within decades, it rains at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and the summer Arctic Sea Ice is predicted to be gone by 2030. The implications of these outcomes are concerning – they include changes to ocean temperatures around the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, and loss of key habitat for Arctic species. Additionally, Northern Europe is anticipated to experience less precipitation and may become less habitable resulting from cooler annual temperatures. These changes are likely to be felt across Northern Europe and have impacts on and reductions to Arctic ice. For the Inuit and other peoples Indigenous to the Arctic, reductions in ice signify decreased transportation and hunting access.

Robert P. Wheelersburg

Introduction

It is clear in late 2024 that the so-called Peace Dividend proclaimed by Prime Minister Thatcher and President Bush following the breakup of the Soviet Union failed to materialize (Hoagl, 1990). Worse for the northern regions, although controversial, the oft-mentioned concept of Arctic exceptionalism, wherein peaceful and cooperative relations between circumpolar nations are facilitated by the Arctic Council (Gjørv & Hodgson, 2019), also has not come to fruition. Following two decades of trying to cash in on the Peace Dividend and Arctic Exceptionalism, several of the Nordic countries are today unable to defend themselves after they decreased defense budgets, eliminated universal conscription, and reduced armed forces. The lack of Nordic security preparedness after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led Denmark, Iceland, and Norway to increase defense spending and caused Finland and Sweden to join NATO. In response to the Russian threat and the emergence of China in the Circumpolar Region, the U.S. reactivated the 11th Airborne Division and established an Arctic defense center, both based in Alaska. Russia is building or reoccupying Arctic bases, creating new units, and establishing an Arctic strategic command. Arctic strategic bipolarity exists again like the Cold War. Yet, the situation is different now since the melting ice will soon allow grey-zone security threats (Atlantic Council, 2022) such as rogue (i.e., out of area) states, criminal organizations, and terrorist groups to operate in the region.

Urban Wråkberg

Are field excursions, participant observations and face-to-face interviews during visits to an area of study a prerequisite for claiming profound knowledge on it, or is freedom of travel just some kind of ingrained privilege for academic researchers? This commentary for the Arctic Yearbook will explore the present dilemmas of doing research in social sciences and the humanities on the Norwegian, Finnish and Russian High North borderland as we face sanctions and rapid change in national and university policies towards Russia.

While belief has recently all but evaporated in the media and among North-European governments, in the Barents Euroarctic Region 1993-2022 cross-border program, modelled on EU neighborhood policies, faith was high for some decades in the institutional cross-border partnerships it facilitated, governed by top-down funding and political promotion. Among the components of this were cross-border interaction on regional level by "people-to-people" relationships. After Russia’s military attack on Ukraine in 2022 this peace-work is now seen as highly problematic, stamped in hindsight by many as naïve and counter to the real security interests of the Nordic countries.1 Is this maneuvering the necessary flip-side of a responsible top-down monitoring of northern regional activities including university borderland research, Russian studies and cross-border education? Most Scandinavian scholars seem to say yes to that today, esp. those who didn’t engage more than opportunistically in the Barents Euroarctic policy in the first place. Somehow lost in the present new-old “security from above” concern are people still residing under the pressure of outmigration in the Euroarctic, and those who take seriously the Euroarctic collective memory – dating far back to similar times of conflict that were brought north from the south.

This commentary will briefly relate a journey made by a group of Norwegian citizens, including the present author, to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk in June 2024 and the storm of dislike it caused in Norway a few weeks later when information about it was planted on the national media scene. Public condemnation and deep concern were expressed to response-fishing journalists by domestic commentators, importantly the leader of the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø (UiT) who reacted immediately to journalists against two of the travelers who were former and present professors of the UiT. The “successful” journalist initiation and piloting of this affair through a week of overblown agitation will be reflected on, along with the widely spread lack of awareness of the principles of freedom of speech and research that are stipulated in Norwegian law. Attention will be drawn to how different academics, the public, journalists and university leaders understand and apply the Western sanction-policy against Russia which Norway follows. I will go on to present what I see as the main “take-aways” of this affair, and what may be the continuing challenges for scholarly research on Russia that it demonstrates.


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