by James Raffan
Ingrid Skjoldvaer was sixteen years old and in grade eleven when she won a scholarship with Students on Ice to travel to Canadian Inuit communities by ship and join in the sharing of participants’ stories from throughout the circumpolar world. I was a staff member on this expedition; when I returned, I prattled on to Gail about this fearless young woman who was leading a campaign to stop the Norwegian national oil company, Statoil, from doing seismic surveying in the ecologically sensitive seas near her home. In the months since we had met, Ingrid’s group, Nature and Youth (Natur og Ungdom), in concert with other Norwegian environmental groups, had convinced politicians to refuse seismic surveying of the petroleum potential below the sea floor, a necessary precursor to eventual test drilling and production.
Safely off the ferry in the town of Skarberget, we continued to Narvik and then swung left around Ofotfjord toward the Vesterålen Archipelago, the northernmost part of Nordland County. Our drive up Norway had convinced us that there was no such thing as a house or a home on flat ground. Norway is all about split-level houses. We eventually found our way to Ingrid’s family home overlooking Sigerfjord; it too was cut into a very steep hill leading down to the sea.
With her long blond hair pulled back in a matter-of-fact ponytail, Ingrid had a smile that lit up the tidy sea-themed living room. Although she was a little shy, it didn’t take long—knowing Gail and I had been following news of her campaign on Facebook throughout the winter—before she produced a copy of the local paper with a photo of herself, beaming, in her mother’s bunad (national dress) from southwestern Norway, holding a flag in front of a crowd of cheering onlookers under the headline “Seir’n Er Var,” meaning “The victory is ours.”
In the next few days, with Ingrid as our guide, we travelled by car, by canoe, by ferry, and by foot to coastal locations throughout her home region in the archipelago, where she introduced us to fishermen and to the reasons why, as an eleven-year-old, she had decided that the preservation of these home waters and the fish they nurtured was a cause to which she wanted to dedicate her life. Big thoughts for an eleven-year-old, but thoughts that had turned into impressive actions for a sixteen-year-old.
At the fishing port of Hovden, closest to the cod nursery coveted by Statoil, we walked among great wooden racks—called hjell in Norwegian—where split cod were dried by sun and sea air as cold-adapted bacteria slowly fermented and preserved the delicate white meat. Stockfish was the oldest export of Norway, Ingrid explained. It required energy to catch the fish, but after that, once the fish were cleaned and hung, drying was the most environment-friendly way imaginable to preserve it. “We still ship it all over the world,” she said proudly. “For us stockfish is almost like bread. So preserving the cod fishery is important globally, but it is also very much a part of Norwegian culture and identity.”
We met a fisherman on the Hovden wharf, cleaning a couple of fish for his supper. She introduced him and we talked about her campaign. “It’s not a big victory,” she said, “but without the permit to do the seismic testing, the oil companies will not be able to go any further, for now. It’s more like a small battle in a bigger war.”
At stake here were two of Norway’s most significant resources: cod and oil. And because of the starkness of the conflict that had captivated this young woman, the more she explained to us, the more we read, the more it seemed that what was happening in Norway was emblematic of similar tensions throughout the circumpolar world. If it wasn’t cod versus oil, it was reindeer versus mining, caribou versus dam construction, seals versus tourism, wilderness versus roads, natives versus non-natives, conservation versus development, citizens versus governments.
Here in Vesterålen, we found a nursery of the world’s largest remaining population of cod, a biological fact that seemed at odds with the continued search for offshore hydrocarbons. Petroleum made up 25 percent of Norway’s GDP—it was the largest per capita producer of oil and gas outside the Middle East—and while fishing was a significant source of food for export and for domestic consumption, Ingrid was quick to admit that economically it paled in comparison with oil. Nevertheless, “it is about more than money,” she scoffed.
To see where she would go next, I couldn’t resist baiting her a little by asking why anybody should care about cod. The western Atlantic fishery had collapsed and producers were turning to other species.
Without missing a beat, ever the professional in spite of her young age, she said, “It has everything to do with solidarity. We don’t eat the cod that is caught here on a daily basis, but it does provide a livelihood for quite a number of Norwegians, and it does bring in quite a lot of money when we sell it to other countries. It’s the biggest remaining cod stock in the world, and this coast is where these fish spawn. It makes no sense to risk it any further. We have to be able to say enough is enough.”
Ingrid’s passion, which infused her every word, was what compelled her to join Nature and Youth as a preteen. The organization was originally created as a forum for people under twenty-five who wanted to get out into nature, whether on the sea or on the rugged Norwegian landscape. But by the time the conflict over permission to conduct seismic surveying came along, the organization had evolved, and passion had pushed this remarkable teen well beyond Saturday fishing trips and walks in the woods.
Taking a leadership position in her local chapter of Nature and Youth, Ingrid helped her young colleagues develop their own brand of activism. “We were good sports,” she said with a grin. “We made funny messages. We were rebellious. We made a cod cookbook and sent it to every member of parliament. We made a comic book. And, as the battle went on, we got to be a favourite item of the local media: not just because we were funny but because we always stuck to our case.” All this resulted in a photo album she showed us that led to stories of a face-to-face meeting with Helge Lund, the CEO of Statoil.
“We made a song called ‘Come On, Helge,’ to the tune of Abba’s ‘Mamma Mia,’ and then I ended up having to actually talk to him.”
“Were you scared?” I asked.
“I felt kind of powerful with all of those people behind me. I met him and told him, ‘There are lots of people who don’t agree with you, and I hope your company will start focusing on renewable energy.’ I did that old trick of imagining him in his underwear. At first, when he came to Vesterålen, they wouldn’t let us into the meeting. But we leaked to the press that they wouldn’t let us in. We said that it was outrageous. We asked, through the press, if Lund just wanted to talk to people who agree with him. Eventually, they let two people in. And that’s when I got to talk directly to him.”
Ingrid’s conversation with Helge Lund led to further creative outgrowths of the Nature and Youth campaign that led to other confrontations and other meetings. The next thing Ingrid knew, she was in Oslo meeting with the prime minister. Norway was a huge producer of oil with a very small population, but its domestic emissions of carbon dioxide were minuscule compared with those of other countries. Still, she told Jens Stoltenberg, if he were to consider the climate effects of burning the gas and oil that Norway shipped around the world, its real carbon footprint would jump from less than 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to nearly 600 million tonnes per year. Norway should be working on ways to wean the world off oil, she said, and should be examining Statoil’s request to find more reserves in that context. She implored Stoltenberg to start thinking long term about oil versus cod.
At that point in her report about the campaign and her visit with the prime minister, Ingrid flipped from storyteller to firebrand: “What are we going to do when the oil runs out? In forty years, we’re going to have to do something else. Wouldn’t it be terrible if we spoiled this amazing area, knowing we could have done something else? Because if there is one area that we should say is off limits to the oil industry then it must be here. This is one of the most vulnerable coastlines in the entire world! It’s packed full of life. It’s a beautiful landscape. It’s my home. But it’s also really rou
gh, so if something happens, it would be catastrophic. At one point, you have to say stop.”
Her blood was pumping, and she continued: “My organization made this our case. We got the debate to be about our future. And of course youth have more to say about the future because it is our future. Most of the people who are debating oil in the Arctic—or not, because they don’t care—won’t be alive when the oil starts flowing. We should be able to decide how we are going to live, what kind of world we are going to live in, and what industry should and should not be here.”
In our conversation we touched on many subjects as we toured around the tunnels and byways of Vesterålen. We talked about inspirations—Gro Harlem Brundtland and Our Common Future, Arne Naess and the Stetind Declaration—and particularly how sustainable development, if there is such a thing, will not be possible while poverty and massive social injustices persist in the North and beyond. Ingrid told me how, through social media and the Internet, Nature and Youth in Norway had connected with a group of young environmentalists over the border in Murmansk, Russia, who were as concerned about the fate of the Sami reindeer herders and the aging Kola nuclear power plant as Ingrid and her colleagues were worried about Norwegian issues.
Nature and Youth in Norway secured funding for two young members to act as mentors for PIM, the Russian counterpart of Nature and Youth, in Murmansk. Communications from the Russians’ hidden IP address, running under the official radar through Twitter and Facebook, have allowed the Norwegians to understand that the freedom they enjoyed to speak their piece to government was not shared by their Russian counterparts. The Russian government actively tried to quell their dissent, while the two Nature and Youth mentors were able to help them create an online petition and solicit the world for support.
Inspiring courage all around. If only all northern youth had the education, the means, and the confidence to create this sort of change.
3: WE HAVE THE POWER
Back in the car and headed through the mountains to our next stop on the Circle itself—Jokkmokk, Sweden—Gail and I were still talking about Ingrid. “Sixteen!” Gail said, even more astonished after having had a couple of days and nights with her to get a full appreciation of her knowledge and commitment to the environment and to right living.
Before our journey to the part of the world surrounding Stetind, I had come to the conclusion that the deep ecology movement was a bit of a bust: it was right-headed but had essentially failed to make any headway into popular consciousness. But here was a teenager who had breathed the same Arctic air as Arne Naess and come to the same conclusions about how she would live her life.
The scenery along Highway E10 from Norway to Sweden was reminiscent of what one would see on the Canadian Pacific Railway running through the Rocky Mountains. Snow-capped peaks, cascading waterfalls, and deep valley vistas stretched off into infinity. Eagles and ravens soared near cliffs tall enough to impress Odin himself.
At the crest of a long hill just over the border in Sweden (where the quality of the road surface and the engineering of the curves and the roadbed improved dramatically), Highway E10 eased out into a link of crystalline lakes guarded on both sides by twin marches of snow-spattered hills. At the foot of 1,590-metre Vassitjåkka, the most commanding mountain in the range, was “the most northerly train station in Sweden,” according to our guidebook. Set in the sweep of this majestic valley, the two-storey red-brick structure and its surrounding sheds and outbuildings along the twin-track railway looked like something out of a movie. We just had to stop and put on our hiking boots.
The crunch of lichen on grey granite, the rabbit’s-foot feel of lush reindeer moss underfoot, the arresting pinks of mountain heather bobbing in the sunshine all brought us back to a familiar place: the tundra. The air was clear and cool. The sky was blue. Pictures in a little museum inside the station indicated that the Sami used to drive reindeer by the thousand right through this place. Many times, as we walked quietly toward shadowed cliffs on higher ground, I imagined us following trails cut between the bearberries, crowberries, and fuzzy dwarf willow catkins by the feet of those animals, followed by the hide boots or skis of the herders themselves.
Higher up, we stopped, opened a flask of coffee, and watched a line of squat black ore cars pulled by two electric locomotives that appeared to the east, passed below us, and disappeared into a tunnel just west of the station.
As we looked down over the valley, Gail spotted a group of people sunbathing outside a building that looked like a dorm on this side of the track. On our way back down we learned that they were students from Luleå University of Technology, and what looked like a residence was actually their school’s own “off-piste, self-catered ski resort,” here in the mountains at 68.5° north. From this crew, here for a few days of hiking and mountain biking, we learned that many of their university’s programs were directed toward jobs in the mining sector. Research happened at the Vassijaure facility, but, they added, “we might as well play as we learn. It is such a beautiful place.”
In contrast to Vassijaure, Kiruna seemed like nothing more than a nasty little mining town. But the scope of the mine boggled the mind. Although it is billed as one of the most modern iron mines in the world, the first surface pit opened here in 1898. The ore body at that time was estimated to be four kilometres long, eighty to a hundred metres wide, and as deep into the earth as two kilometres, we learned—not that the numbers meant much as we sipped our Statoil coffee and pondered the tourist messaging. What did signal the sheer size of the operation was the fact that for nearly 113 years, trains had been hauling fifteen million tonnes of high-grade iron ore out of this mine each year and proven reserves were still over 600 million tonnes, meaning that the life of this mine, at current consumption rates, could go on for nearly half a century more.
Mining, of course, needs power. Another feature of our route back to the Arctic Circle at Jokkmokk was the massive power dams, holding water anywhere there was potential energy to be trapped in a natural pond created by the mountain landscape. On the Lule River alone, there were fifteen hydroelectric power plants. Not a great river for canoeing. But in terms of renewable resources in a time when the world was asking industry to scale back its dependence on fossil fuels, Sweden was ahead of the curve. And, of course, it was hydroelectric power that had run the iron trains for all these years.
We stopped at the visitors’ centre operated by Vattenfall, the utility that ran Sweden’s power generation and distribution grid. The original 480-megawatt dam on this site was built to power the mines and the original railway. Since then, many other dams, including the Harsprånget hydroelectric power station—at 977 megawatts, Sweden’s largest—had been built on the Lule and elsewhere in northern Sweden, to energize the resource extraction industries. As we walked around the very creatively designed pathways, checking out viewpoints of the dam and reading the signage, I couldn’t help wondering where all the reindeer were, right here in what was once the heart of Lapland.
Drawn to a grassy mezzanine with a park bench on it, in among concrete terraces high up on the valley wall above the tailrace of the Porjus dam, we came across a massive piece of granite with what looked like a giant aluminum corkscrew heading skyward from its top. This was a four-hundred-tonne, fifteen-metre-high granite sculpture called Kraft (“power” or “force” in Swedish), created by a Swedish artist as a “memorial to the era of hydropower construction along the Lule River valley.” The corkscrew was actually a stylized representation of falling water, which started to make sense in the context of aluminum renderings of shafts and turbines inside a top-to-bottom rift in the rock. Two massive handprints were carved into the side of the sculpture as if granite, in human hands, were as soft as pie dough. Without a word, the sculpture standing next to the massive hydro dam conveyed the incontrovertible message “We have the power. And look what we’ve done with it.”
I awoke in a lakeside room at the Hotel Jokkmokk and realized that the racket right outside our win
dow was an unkindness of ravens bickering over the spoils of some kind of large gathering that had taken place the previous day on the back lawn of the hotel. Gail had somehow slept through this whole avian argument, but I stood behind the drapes and peeked out into the sunshine to see what all the fuss was about.
The original reason to settle in Jokkmokk for a few nights, other than the fact that it is the biggest of four Swedish communities effectively located on the Arctic Circle, was that it was the centre of traditional Swedish Sápmi (Sami territory). Nine traditional Sami villages surrounding Jokkmokk had been incorporated with four Swedish national parks and two large nature reserves into one large protected area called Laponia, 9,400 square kilometres in total, that was designated in 1996 as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
By almost all official accounts of the Laponia project I could find, it had been a great success at protecting and perpetuating both the natural and the cultural values of the area. Within Laponia, the Sami could go about their reindeer-herding traditional activities. The reindeer had relative freedom to roam, almost as they had done before the advent of roads, mines, and power dams, or so the UNESCO literature let on. Tourists got a chance to participate in traditional activities, and Sami craftspeople were able to market their duodji (handcrafted goods), which brought outside cash to the traditional economy. The parks promoted their own conservation objectives.