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- Convenors:
-
Áki Guðni Karlsson
(University of Iceland)
Cory Thorne Gutiérrez (Memorial University of Newfoundland)
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- Stream:
- INTERSECTIONALITIES
- Location:
- Room H-201
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 15 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
With the North Atlantic Ocean as our center we focus on the connecting flows of people and ideas as they relate to folklore and ethnology from Europe to North America, from the Artic to the Caribbean and Africa. We ask how we re-imagine the ocean and how the ocean helps us re-imagine ourselves.
Long Abstract:
In 2012, ethnomusicologist and island studies scholar Philip Hayward edited a special issue of the journal Shima, where he coined the term aquapelago: a call to shift from terrestrially-based to ocean-centered studies in the need to understand the ecological and cultural impacts of anthropocene on small island studies. The term aquapelago is a recognition of the value of oceans - the vast unknown and unmarked aspects of oceans - as the place of movement and connection across our planet. Maritime folklore and ethnology has long recognized the power of aquapelagic imaginaries and materialities. From the study of sea shanties and mythological sea creatures to ghost ships and sailor's customs, there is a rich history of studying ocean related-lore. As ocean-oriented communities struggle with shifting materialities in response to changing ecologies and economics, we ask how we re-imagine the ocean and how the ocean helps us re-imagine ourselves. How might an aquapelagic imaginary help us re-interpret concepts of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, humanism and post-humanism? How might the ocean serve to deepen our understanding of and/or escape from colonial frameworks? Placing the North Atlantic Ocean as our center allows us to focus on the connecting flows of people and ideas as they relate to folklore and ethnology from Europe to North America, from the Artic to the Caribbean and Africa.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 15 June, 2022, -Cameron Langford Barlow (Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador)
Paper short abstract:
An ecocritical analysis of oceanic folk beliefs in coastal Newfoundland that reconsiders the role of belief in the agency of the natural world, through folk imaginaries, in re-shaping human behaviors of stewardship, care, or destruction of natural ocean environments in the present day.
Paper long abstract:
How do stories implicate our interaction with the natural environment? How does folk belief inform or change our relationship with the natural world in both positive and negative ways? Approaching folklore through an ecocritical perspective can not only reveal historic shifts in the human-nature interaction, but also clarify implicit perspectives that inform current human behaviors toward and interaction with the environment. Further, both ecocritical and critical regionalist approaches allow us to observe local and global implications of folk belief toward care for, or destruction of, the natural world. This paper reviews select folklore collections containing elements of belief in the non-human other, specifically found within coastal Newfoundland and oceanic lores, to help re-consider the force of folk belief on ecological awareness in relation to contemporary oceanic industries in the North Atlantic. We consider whether the prevalence of folk belief supports or undermines local relationships or views of care and stewardship for oceanic and coastal spaces, and specifically how folk belief in the agency of natural entities influences cultural constraints for interaction with natural spaces.
Brita Brenna (University of Oslo)
Paper short abstract:
Bear Island is a small uninhabited island in the Barents Sea. Coalmining started in 1916 and the small mining settlement Tunheim was built on the brink of the ocean, abandoned 1925. Investigating this derelict town, this is a paper about an experiment in historical fieldwork of and in the present.
Paper long abstract:
Trying to make sense of how fieldworkers in the Arctic practiced time at the beginning of the 20th century brought me to Bjørnøya, or Bear Island, together with two colleagues. After reading diaries and articles about Arctic scientific and geopolitical history, the ambition was to understand how observing and recording the heritage of Bjørnøya could help understand how the geological and natural times of the Arctic were co-produced with the times of the people studying it in the 1910s and 1920s. Bear Island is a small uninhabited island in the Barents Sea. Coalmining started in 1916 and the small mining settlement Tunheim was built on the brink of the ocean. Connected to the rest of the world only by the seaways, a mining society was established with the purpose of extracting coal - and securing Norwegian presence in the midst of the Barents Sea. Geologists and topographers were important for establishing the knowledge base for these mining activities. In 1925 the mine was abandoned, and the settlement with 1.5 kilometers of rails, two locomotives, 25 houses and the mining machines was left to itself, there on the brink. This decomposing “ghost-town” has a powerful presence, an affective strength that produces a time of decay and a time of absence. My short question is how can the presence of, and presence in, this place help answer historical questions? This is a paper about an experiment in historical fieldwork of the present on the brink of sea and time.
Arndís Bergsdóttir (University of Iceland ROCS)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses how ocean sediment are depositories of earthly, human/non-human conversations, re-shaped and archived by the sea. Such conversations speak to heritage as relational constructs and trouble ideas about archives as human ways of organizing and understanding the world.
Paper long abstract:
During a research cruise across the Irminger Sea, Deanmark Strait and Icelandic Basin with a team of ROCS scientist, I sat down with the project’s geoscientist. The sea’s swells were wreaking havoc on the cognitive abilities of my wave challenged brain, making only possible for the simplest of questions to emerge. “Our research at ROCS focuses on ocean, climate, and society” I said, staring into my coffee. “Why the ocean?” He looked straight at me, with the patience imperative for transdisciplinary conversations. He replied, “because everything ends up in the ocean”. This paper rises out of this simple yet transformative conversation. It seeks empirical grounding in the samples of marine sediment cores collected with a gravity corer on the ROCS research cruise in June 2021, some of which date 40.000 years back. This research engages with the collection of cores aboard the research vessel as well as the cores themselves. This presentation cuts across the popular binaries of nature and culture as it tentatively articulates how – as everything ends up in the ocean - the seafloor is a depository where the earth’s information is collected into sediment and driven by the ocean’s layers and currents that shape its own practices of “taxonomy”. In this presentation I argue that oceans as archives for earthly recollections based on human and non-human conversations speaks to heritage as more than human constructs and troubles resilient ideas about archives as human ways of organizing and understanding the world.
Áki Guðni Karlsson (University of Iceland)
Paper short abstract:
In sea-reliant economies the harbor occupies a central position as an interface between land and sea. Different imaginaries ebb and flow there, creating a hybrid and changing material configuration intimately connected with the shifts of its surrounding waters.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I will describe how the hybrid material reality of Reykjavík Harbor reflects changing imaginaries and mythologies projected by different agents acting on it. I look at the strategic notions of “land-based” and “sea-based” activities, and how these create conceptual and material boundaries that are in turn challenged and transgressed by different actors. In direct contrast with the notion of the harbor as a “fixed” haven, protecting the city’s economic assets from the raging ocean, the position the harbor occupies on the margin of sea and city makes it accessible to various entanglements, creating a fluid and contested space. Different actors project their dreams in the constant reforming of the harbor; with industrial fisheries, small-time fishermen, eider ducks, tourist operators, algae, hotels, property developers, pollocks, heritage managers, city officials, crabs and microbes, rusting nails and rotting piers, all affecting changes in its material configuration. Aquapelagic imaginaries engender practices and mythologies that find their expression in the materiality of the harbor itself, and can be surveyed by interacting with the hybrid life-forms that populate this space. Based on multidimensional ethnographic work in Reykjavík Harbor, this paper proposes a dynamic view of the harbor as a constantly shifting transitional space between land and sea.