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Accepted Paper:
The shape-shifting sea-washed gates: materialities and imaginaries entangled in Reykjavík harbor
Áki Guðni Karlsson
(University of Iceland)
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.