Cultural landscape of the Arctic: ‘recycling’ of soviet imagery in the Russian settlement of Barentsburg, Svalbard (Norway)

ABSTRACT

The paper analyzes the contemporary cultural landscape of the Arctic, using the example of Barentsburg, a Russian mining town located on the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway. The study uses current debates on urban cultural landscape, heritage, and identity to explain the endurance of Soviet imagery in the contemporary cultural landscape. The article argues that Soviet heritage has not been ‘left over’; instead, it has been purposefully ‘recycled’ to serve its claimants under new economic and geopolitical conditions. By maintaining its presence on Svalbard, Russia asserts its Arctic nation status and adds the Arctic dimension to its identity project in the making. The latter instrumentalizes selective aspects of the Soviet past that fit well with political discourses in contemporary Russia, including those of power, space, and otherness.

KEYWORDS:

• Arctic
• cultural landscape
• identity
• Svalbard
• soviet heritage
• Russia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The original “Treaty between Norway, The United States of America, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ireland and the British overseas Dominions and Sweden concerning Spitsbergen signed in Paris 9^th February 1920” came into effect in 1925. As of 2012, 42 states have ratified the Svalbard Treaty (Governor of Svalbard, 2012).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway under the Research Program on Assigning Cultural Values (KULVER) and the Border Aesthetics project [grant number 194581].