"(Un)inhabiting Svalbard: Stories of makings from a transient place in the High Arctic"

Abstract: The Svalbard archipelago, as well as the Arctic in general, have long been portrayed as
pristine nature, harsh and hostile environment, an uninhabitable space for human beings. In reality
the Arctic is home to four million people whose everyday lives have been fast-changing and have
been impacted by not only the physical changes but also other broader discourses such as
geopolitics, scientific research, sustainability and not to forget global crisis such as the Covid-19
pandemic. All these myths, representations, and entangled histories and realities lead to the
following questions: How have some places, not others, come to be inhabited? What makes a place
inhabitable, and for whom? Who has the right to define that? And how do we view different
approaches of inhabiting on different scales?
Drawing on both conceptual and empirical materials, this article is a joint effort of us as a group of
social scientists who are conducting or have conducted research on Svalbard.1 By telling stories
from our respective experiences and backgrounds, we wish to illustrate a more nuanced picture of
how economic, geopolitical, scientific, sociocultural, and environmental concerns are always
interconnected, and more importantly, how different forms of (in)voluntary inhabiting and
uninhabiting in Svalbard, in particular in Longyearbyen and Svea, can possibly lead to or have led to
various makings and becomings.