No. 35 (2015): Arctic Modernities

Edited by Sigfrid Kjeldaas and Anka Ryall. Dedicated to Fredrik Chr. Brøgger. Cover image by Marja Helander.

 

Nordlit 35 is dedicated to Fredrik Chr. Brøgger, Professor Emeritus of American Literature and Culture, on his 70th birthday on April 23, 2015. With one exception, all the contributors—like Fredrik himself—are members of the international research project ‘Arctic Modernities’, funded by the Polar Research Programme of the Research Council of Norway, with additional funding from the Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Some of the contributors, including one of the editors, have also been Fredrik’s colleagues at UiT for many years. Others have been his students. Others again have collaborated with him in various capacities. All are happy to consider themselves his friends. […] The ‘Arctic Modernities’ project, like the contributions in this issue of Nordlit, examines ‘instances’ of Arctic modernity, often in light of the past. As a whole, the articles seem to bear out what we emphasised in our grant application to the Research Council, namely that the modern Arctic seems to have a double discursive signification. On the one hand—for those of us who live and work in the North—it signifies something accessible, everyday and prosaic; on the other, it is a ‘never–never land’ of romance and adventure. […] One hypothesis linking many of the contributions to the ‘Arctic Modernities’ project is that discourses of the Arctic embody the ‘paradoxes’ of modernity. For this reason, we believe that a study of the discursive significations of the modern Arctic may also throw light on general processes of modernisation. […] The editors want to thank Ketil Zachariassen, head of the Department of Literature and Culture at UiT, and Michael Schmidt, editor-in-chief of Nordlit, for their support of this project. Thanks also to Per Pippin Aspaas and Jan Erik Frantsvåg for advice, to Torunn Berger for many forms of practical assistance, to Elin Haugdal for providing the cover photograph, and to Bjørn Hatteng for designing the cover. All the authors deserve special thanks, both for their positive response to our call for contributions to this issue of the journal and for keeping our very strict deadlines. Finally, thank you, Fredrik, for being so genially and cheerfully in our midst. Have a pleasant read.