Contribution short abstract:

Resource exploitation in remote Arctic Lapland adjoins different global processes, which brings about confusing associations. Presenting this messy confusion in writing as it relates to the surface mine of Hannukainen might be best accomplished by a free-circulating narrative. But how exactly?

Contribution long abstract:

Lapland, North Europe, is a place where cyclical worldviews collide with circulatory world systems and circular economic imagination. It is a place of indigenous and colonial friction. Of fabulistic visions of resource extraction by the mining industry. A place with a tourism industry based on implausibly pristine nature in need of infrastructural redevelopment. The lines that branch out from these interconnected arenas extend to the global economy with its cyclical flow, making sensical narratives flawed from the onset.

A case in point is the abandoned surface mine of Hannukainen in Kolari. Hannukainen is practically a non-place. A place where the only tangible elements are mounds of rocks and restless cavities antithetical to the seemingly untouched natural landscape surrounding them. The mine's future is indecipherable, with plans to reopen the mine emerging recurringly. It is a transient space, near-wholly human made, with labyrinthine architecture of unstable design inducing free-flowing associations reaching far and wide and back again.

This paper explores ways to imbue the written narrative of the strange mine with a sense that emulates on-site fielding. Dérive approach, an observational walk along an unpremeditated path, is sought out in creative academic writing with several adjoining looping narratives. The goal is to present the confusion and surprising associations anew in a book-format with each loop, where the narration leads the reader repeatedly back to already read sections, generating deeper perspective. The experiment aims to provide an alternative template for documenting messiness by unwriting the standard making-sense aspect of narration.