Journeys to Mines and Mining Towns

Euro-Arctic Council, in cooperation with the Centre for Sami Studies, the Arctic University of Norway, UiT. At this conference, several of the present-ers questioned the belief in coexistence between mining and reindeer herding.

In December 2012, the Norwegian Ministry of Commerce arranged the last dialogue seminar before completing the new mineral strategy. It was very broad and placed representatives from the Friends of the Earth, Norway, Norges Naturvernforbund/Luonddugáhttenlihttu, the Sámi Parliament, the Fishermen’s Association and a number of mining companies in the same room. The box was ticked. The sense of inexorability became apparent at the Polytechnic Association’s mining seminar at Litteraturhuset in Oslo, one month after the launching of the mineral strategy. The focus on this seminar was how to get more students into the subjects of geology and mining. In an answer to a question I had asked the panel, Elisabeth Gammelsæter replied:

I will make one fact very clear for the architect student: The miner-als are there and they are going to be extracted. (Secretary General of Norsk Bergindustri [Norwegian mineral industry], Elisabeth Gammel-sæter, in panel, Oslo, May 10, 2013)

The same rhetoric about mitigating efforts and coexistence was the back-ground of a dialogue conference in Trondheim, where Norwegian mining industry representatives and the Ministry of Commerce met with the organ-isations representing the seafood industries and the environmental movement, to conduct a dialogue about sea deposits of mine tailings (Dialogkonferanse Fisk/Mineraler, Trondheim, 2013).

I also attended critical seminars. In 2012, the globalisation conference arranged by Fagforbundet included a short event, focusing on local com-munities in the Arctic, and there were “conferences that gave ample space for critical views and affected parties”: Framtid for fjorden, Vevring, 2013;

Reindeer Herding and Mining, side-event to Álta 2013; Mineraler, milliarder, miljø og motstand – gruvekonferansen in Kautokeino/ Guovdageaidnu No-vember, 2013; and Folkefest for Repparfjorden June, 2014. Attending these conferences prepared the fieldwork as I got to know the discourse, and built an extended academic and social network.

4.2.3 Journeys to Mines and Mining Towns

I participated in four group field trips, visiting mines and mining towns.

These collective activities yielded fieldwork moments that I wish to articu-late, because they offer a context of mining in Fennoscandia. The future of

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prospected landscapes might be percieved elsewhere at places where the mining industry has transformed communities and environments. Participat-ing in four group excursions to Arctic regions highly afflicted with extrac-tive industries, I have visited mines and mining towns in Canada, Sweden, Finland, Norway and in the Russian Kola Peninsula (Fig 4.4).

The first journey was to to Montréal, Fermont, Wabush and Labrador City, with the Future North Research Group (Figs 4.5 - 4.7). The flight from Mon-tréal to Wabush took hours, and we looked down on the patched extractive landscape of industrial forestry, then we drove by minibus through the forests with their artificial mountains of waste rock piled up in horizontal shelves covered in snow.

We stand on the viewing platform, marvelling at the grand open pit of the Arcelor Mittal iron ore mine outside Fermont, Quebec. Twelve-me-tre-high trucks spiral upwards and downwards. This mine started off by removing the mountaintop and then blasting the way downwards to get to the ore: 14 metres deeper each time. It is narrow down there at the bottom. Rusty dust and snow are mixed. The trucks look ant-sized from our perspective. Our guide informs us that soon it will no longer be possible to operate the pit. The mining company will then remove the million dollars’ worth of blue pumping pavilion on the pit floor, and the open pit mine will slowly be filled ground with water. (Field notes, April 2014)

The centre of Fermont is a mining town inside a one-kilometre long building.

One night, we visit the bar across the hall from the kindergarten. A pole stands idle in a darkened scene. To prevent romantic relation-ships with the miners, the dancers are employed on 14-day fly-in, fly-out contracts and circulate between the different mining towns in the region. (Field notes, April 2014)

The Future North the Kola Peninsula were different. Here I bring a field note from the car ride between Nikel and Zapolyarny, and an image from The beach at Lake Kirovsk (Fig 4.8).

We travel through scorched tundra. Gradually, as the driver put distance between Nikel and our minibus, vegetation cover improved.

But when we closed in on Zapolyarny the landscape darkened once more, blackish. We passed a bridge, and housing blocks appeared in

Fig 4.5: A warning flag on a mined shelf in the Mont Wright mine.

Fig 4.6: The Future North research group on an excursion to Canada.

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Fig 4.7: The view from the viewing platform for visitors to the Mont Wright mine in Fermont, Canada. Snow and rust colour the open pit.

Fig 4.8: The beach at Lake Kirovsk taken at the Future North excursion to the Kola Peninsula. It looks idyllic, but the lake is polluted and over fertilised from the upstream riverine mine tailings discharge pipes.

the horizon. We passed them and, all of a sudden, we were in a green streetscape and soon at the main city square, with pigeons congregat-ing in the square and families enjoycongregat-ing the evencongregat-ing sun. Entercongregat-ing the city was like entering a living room with green plants at every avail-able space. Every street and boulevard exhibit double rows of autumn-coloured native trees.

In August 2014, I participated in a tour arranged by the Friends of the Earth, Norway, [Norges Naturvernforbund/Luonddugáhttenlihttu] and Kola Envi-ronmental Centre to the Kola Peninsula and the White Sea. We met up with local environmentalists and had three long walks in the Hibini Mountains, in forests along the Kandalaksja coast (Fig 4.9). On these walks, we escaped the extractivist logic by following trails through the mined mountains and crossed the mountain pass to the valley beyond, where the locals worked to establish a national park.

We walked along the trails of the transport trains, through the mining fields of Kirovsk and across the mountain pass in the Hibini Moun-tains. Our path was very rocky. Snow patches in the narrow passages gave relief to tired legs. Then we descended into a mountain valley, the soon-to-be national park of Kirovsk. On the distant horizon, artifi-cial mountains of waste rock rose like the imaginative castle of Soria Moria that was depicted on the Norwegian government’s High North strategy. Do these Russian mountains show the future Norwegian landscape? The Hibini Mountains used to be Sámi reindeer husbandry landscapes, but not anymore. (Fieldnotes, August 2014)

From May 10-15, 2015, I participated in a North Calotte round trip, visit-ing mines and environmental activists in Sweden and Finland, arranged by Friends of the Earth, Norway-Sweden-Finland [Naturvskyddsföreningen/

Norges Naturvernforbund/Luonddugáhttenlihttu and Suomen Luonnonsuojel-uliitto]. The larger mining companies had specially assigned staff to maintain the interface between the production of ore and the production of public relations. At Boliden’s grand copper mine (Fig 4.10), Aitik in Giällevarre, a highly competent young woman presented herself as responsible for ‘the ex-ternalities’ of the mine: environment, local community and reindeer herding.

By the shore of the mine tailings deposit we are warned: ‘Do not attempt to walk out on the plain, it is quicksand.’ I try to capture the grey mud plain in a photo. Later, we meet up with representatives of the reindeer herding district, and they tell us that once they lost a

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Fig 4.9: When we walked in the Hibini Mountains, we came over a ridge and saw waste rock deposits in the horizon raise like a vision of the imaginative castle Soria Moria. Is this the future?

Naturvernforbundet and Kola Environmental Centre excursion to the Kola Peninsula.

Fig 4.10: The image shows the outlet of the Mine tailings disposal in Aitik. From Naturvernfor-bundets excursion to the North Calotte.

group of reindeer that got through the security fences and drowned there in the toxic mud. (Fieldnotes, August 2014)

In north Finland, we visited the famous Kittilä gold mine, also known as the Suurikuusikko mine (Fig 4.11). Kittilä is one of the largest gold mines in Europe. It is owned by Agnico-Eagle Mines; in 2015, it produced 177,374 ounces of gold.

The information lecture in the Kittilä mine was given by the old-school CEO of Agnico-Eagle Mines himself. He showed the prospecting maps of the areas surrounding the mine, where they drilled continuously to find feasible extension possibilities for the mine. When a slide titled

‘Sustainable Mining’ appeared in his presentation, he shrugged and said: ‘Sustainability: Sustainability is the name of the game these days’. (Field notes, August 2014).

When we visited Kittilä, we were aware that the prospecting firm, Arctic Gold, which put forward the mining prospect in Biedjovagge (but failed to achieve a permit to go forward with an impact assessment), originally planned to sell the complete prospect with permissions and concessions to the mining corporation, Agnico-Eagle Mines. At least, the CEO said so in the NRK documentary, Gollegiisá. Kittilä is, in fact, not far from Guovdageaid-nu/Kautokeino. The Swedish town Kiruna/Giron is a company town built by Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB, a mining and mineral group that mines and processes Norrbotten’s unique iron ore wholly owned by the Swedish state.

The iron ore mine in Kiirunavaara has been extracted for 120 years, and now the city is moving to allow for continued extraction. Visitors are treated with a bus ride 500 metres down in the tunnels to an underground visitor cen-tre, where they show a film about ‘green mining’ and the automatisation of mining operations. The film reveals that robots perform most of the manual labour in Kirunavaara, and they are steered remotely from south Sweden.

In a study of mineral prospects, excursions to comparable mines provide an illusion of seeing the future. Mining companies, conversely, make sure to present the world view of global mining and take very good care of visi-tors in their operating mines. Every mine is unique, but the mines I have visited, both in Canada and in Fenniscandia, had arrangements for visitors that followed the same general scheme: security information and distribution of visitor helmets and vests, a guided tour through selected stops along the production line from solid rock, via crushed ore, to ore concentrate and pellet production. The main attraction on such tours is a viewpoint platform

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looking the open pit or sometimes, as in the Áitik copper mine, a downwards spiralling ride down in the pit, which we are told will be a future lake when the mine is closed for production. The tailings deposit we had to negotiate to be allowed to see. Back at the visitors’ centre, which might include an exhibition, a meal is served, and lectures given; one can ask questions, but the answers seem rehearsed. Finally, one receives glossy brochure handouts and souvenirs. When it is possible to experience landscape change by moving through and perceiving the landscape, change has already taken place. Plans and prospects and political strategies depict transformed landscapes before change has taken place. The plans do not reflect the massive change that is about to happen.