Peace, Sound and the Resonance of History
A Collaborative Walk from Tromsø’s Telegrafbukta to Sydspissen
Keywords:
peacebuilding, soundscapes, haptic geographies, heritage, future ancestryAbstract
An itinerary is a dynamic spatial practice that connects places in sequence. In everyday mobilities, we follow familiar routes almost automatically, often losing awareness of our surroundings as movement becomes routine. In unfamiliar settings, we may explore more actively, but without the knowledge or context needed to fully understand what we encounter.
Drawing on the pragmatics of communication and environmental humanities, this short walk along Tromsøya’s southern shoreline is designed to encourage deeper engagement with place, grounded in local awareness, historical understanding and sensory experience. Meaning emerges through interaction with contextual cues: the spatial arrangement and built landscape of the area, multimodal signage, and the sounds and silences of past and present. Participants’ contributions add further layers of awareness. In this way, itineraries can function as collaborative practices of situated meaning-making.
Learning to attend to the intricacies of place within our mobility practices may help foster a more reflective, peaceful and ethical attitude towards people, other living beings and the natural environment. This transformative potential affects both those who experience such walks directly and in situ, and those who later encounter these places from elsewhere and at different moments through forms of storytelling capable of transcending mainstream exclusionary imaginaries.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Maria Cristina Paganoni, Paula Ryggvik Mikalsen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
