The Lure of Perceived Vastness

In 2014, the impatience among regional actors who wanted to see results from the High North policy was voiced by the leader of the regional bank, Savings Bank One North Norway), in a programme called Agenda North Norway that summoned the industry and commercial leader of the North.

Agenda North Norway produced a feasibility study and hosted a conference called North Norway in World-class, Agenda 2014. In line with claims from the mineral and energy industries, it called for access to land and smoother planning processes for industrial prospects. ‘It is important to note that the

in-44 My translation from Solberg 2014:‘Stadig bedre informasjon om mineralressurser er noe av det viktigste vi som myndigheter kan bidra med for å stimulere til økt aktivitet i Fig 4.13: The agenda North Norway Conference made a feasibility study that claimed that 98%

of the area in North Norway was unused. The President of the Sámi Parliament reminded about reindeer husbandry. Courtesy of Sparebank 1 Nord Norge.

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dustries that are considered world leaders are also considered relatively land intensive’ (Menon and Kunnskapsparken Bodø, 2014b, 77, my emphasis). It is interesting to note that, among the cited sources in North Norway in World-class, Agenda 2014, there is not one article about reindeer herding or, with the exception of tourism, about the land usages that are dependent on sound ecosystems. The agenda report refers to such usage of the land as “other busi-nesses”, and those are listed as obstacles to the “world-class industries”. The report continues:

Northern Norway’s minerals are still under the ground, due to area conflicts, lack of entrepreneurship and extensive popular scepticism of a business that can disrupt and destroy nature. This is especially true of mining, where area needs and deposition of waste rock and tailings are particularly relevant. Area conflicts can be linked to natural envi-ronments in the form of impacts of non-intervention areas (INON), reduction of outfield areas used for outdoor activities and effects on natural diversity. The conflicts may also apply to access to areas for other business, including reindeer husbandry, agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture (mine tailings disposal) and tourism. (Menon and Kunns-kapsparken Bodø, 2014b, 76, my emphasis)⁴⁵

This, first, Agenda North Norway conference simply claimed that 98 per cent of the land in North-Norway is “unused” [uutnyttet areal] (Menon and Kunnskapsparken Bodø, 2014a, 12). In the regional public discourse, Agenda 14’s claim that 98 per cent of North Norway is unused turned out to be a weak argument that first and foremost revealed the aggressive agenda of Agenda North Norway. According to the journalists Måsø, Guttorm, and Sara, the report itself was not of world-class standard (Måsø et al., 2014). In their opinion, the President of the Sámi Parliament, Aili Keskitalo, who was invited to the conference as a keynote speaker, saved the day, by setting this misunderstanding straight she said:

In the same breath as it is claimed that reindeer herders use too much

45 My translation of My translation of Menon and Kunnskapsparken Bodø 2014b, 76:

‘Nord-Norges mineraler ligger fortsatt under bakken, som følge av arealkonflikter, manglende entreprenørskapsånd og utstrakt folkelig skepsis til en virksomhet som kan forstyrre og ødelegge naturen. Dette gjelder spesielt for gruvedrift, hvor arealbehov og deponering av avgangsmasser er særlig aktuelt. Arealkonfliktene kan være knyttet til naturmiljøer i form av påvirkning av inngrepsfrie naturområder (INON), reduksjon av utmarksområder som brukes til friluftsliv og effekter på naturmangfold. Konfliktene kan også gjelde tilgang til arealer for annet næringsliv, herunder reindrift, landbruk, fiskeri og havbruk (gjelder spesielt sjødeponier) og reiseliv.’

pastureland, it is established that they do not exist there. I do not un-derstand how they can be forgotten. (Måsø et al., 2014)⁴⁶

In Keskitalos speech, she told about how the North Norwegians and Sámi had been written out of history, but she also invited conversations, in which both peoples, Sámi and Norwegians, together should develop the region and find ways to utilise natural resources without destroying them. Reindeer husband-ry interests in the region were invisible in the conference preparations, yes, but certainly not inaudible at the venue. The invisibility was the very feature that Aili Keskitalos used in her speech to make reindeer husbandry audible at the conference and the media coverage of the event (Fig 4.13). Reindeer hus-bandry, was in fact mentioned in Menons feasibility study for Agenda 2014 in terms of contested landscapes where many industries compete about the same land. In the illustrated summary of the feasibility study it was bluntly put:

For example, renewable energy production and mineral extraction are on a collision course with reindeer husbandry and agriculture. If North Norwegian business and industry are to become world leaders, compromises must be made to better utilise the abundance of area that exist in the north. (Menon and Kunnskapsparken Bodø, 2014a, 13)⁴⁷ Mentioning Reindeer husbandry as a land use that stood in the way for a world class utilisation of the land it was an echo of the development of hydropower in the 1960’s (See Bjørklund, 2016). It is also a paradox that the paragraph confirms that it already is a competition on utilisation of the areas in the North and at the same time states that there exists area in abundance.

The persistence of the idea that vacant space exist in abundance, might have something to do with how landscapes are perceived. While landscapes are fragmented bit by bit, there is a romanticised insistence of the existence of vast landscapes in the North. Television series confirm it all the time through the feel-good road-movie and wilderness-encounter formats. One evening during the winter of 2015 I watched a BBC documentary where Joanna

46 My translation from Nils H Måsø, Kjell Are Guttorm, Klemet Anders Sara, NRK Sápmi, 12.11.2014: ‘I samme åndedrag som det hevdes at reindriftsutøvere bruker beitelandet for mye, slås det fast at de ikke finnes der. Jeg skjønner ikke at de kan bli avglemt.’

47 My translation of: ‘Eksempelvis er fornybarproduksjon og mineraluttak på kollisjonskurs med reindriftsnæringen og landbruk. Hvis nordnorsk næringsliv skal nå verdenstoppen må likevel kompromisser inngås og den overflod av arealer som finnes i nord utnyttes bedre.’

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Lumley on a quest to experience the Aurora Borealis. In part three she drives along the snow-covered road towards Kautokeino/ Gouvdageidnu through what she describes as: “This endless expanse of Arctic tundra”. She looks in awe through the side screen of her car and sighs:

‘Vast expanses of landscape! Wonderful!’ (Baron et al., 2008).

It is wonderful. But that little word: the intensifyer “vast” signifies an over-whelmedness and a perceived infinity of landscape. In an otherwise well informed and fascinating production wonderfully hosted by Lumley, “Vast expanses of landscape” is a construction that clouds the contested nature of a landscape where space is a scarce resource. Meahcit are disappearing at an alarming rate, the pressure to harvest “green” energy, facilitate new econo-mies, more infrastructure and mining has led to sharper discourse about the utilisation of outfields.

While the extractive industry and those who welcomed it started to become impatient with the politicians, public resistance to industrial prospects be-came more outspoken. In an interview, Prime Minister Erna Solberg stated that ‘It is not in the interest of Norwegian Sámi communities if it becomes so that it is perceived as impossible to run business development in the north.

If so, we cannot provide employment, new jobs, or community services’

(Ballovari and Balto, November 15, 2014).⁴⁸ The interview continues with Solberg’s appeal to local communities: ‘a no-line in minerals, business development, it is essentially the same as weakening the areas in which your children will grow up, says Solberg’ (Ibid).⁴⁹ Evoking rural communities’ fear of not having a prospect, the Prime Minister points towards mineral prospect-ing and industrialisation as the ways to continued prosperity.

4 . 4 A W I N D O W O F O P P O R T U N I T Y

The Repparfjord Tectonic Window is a window through which geologists can study formations in deep geologic time. In the wording of geologists in a

48 My translation /paraphrasing of Ballovari and Balto, November 15, 2014: ‘– Det er ikke til norske samers interesse hvis det blir slik at det oppfattes at det ikke kan drives næringsutvikling i nord, at vi ikke kan sørge for sysselsetning, nye arbeidsplasser og utvikling av lokalsamfunn, sier Solberg.

49 My translation /paraphrasing of Ballovari and Balto: ‘– En nei-linje på mineraler, på næringsutvikling, det er egentlig det samme som å svekke de områdene som man har barn som skal vokse opp i, sier Solberg.’

recently published geologic research paper:

The Repparfjord Tectonic Window (RTW) is situated within the Scan-dinavian Caledonides in Finnmark, northern Norway, and comprises primarily a ~8 km-thick, Early Palaeoproterozoic, volcano-sedimen-tary succession. It represents the northwesternmost exposed termina-tion of the Fennoscandian Shield and is generally correlated with the nearby Alta–Kvænangen Tectonic Window and the Kautokeino and Central Lapland greenstone belts to the south. (Torgersen et al., 2015)⁵⁰

A number of minor mines were in operation until the 1920s. In the 1970s, the Mining Company, Folldal Verk, mined Gumpenjunni [the Wolf Nose] and discharged mine tailings into the fjord, Repparfjorden. The open pit mine was operated until bankruptcy in 1978 (Lund, 2015). After seven years, copper prices fell, and the mine was abandoned without any environmental remedia-tion. Indications of the Nussir ore were unearthed in the 1980s, but the copper repositories in the district have been known for a century. Throughout that century, geologists have been sampling stones in, and publishing academic papers about, the copper occurrence. Kvalsund Municipality prepared in 2004 a municipal plan where the Gumpenjunni/Ulveryggen Mountain was marked as an industrial area.

The Norwegian copper company, Nussir ASA, was established in 2005 to exploit the copper ore at the base of the Nussir Mountain in Kvalsund municipality. Øystein Rushfeldt is a home-grown North-Norwegian mining executive, capable of representing the adventure story of the copper ore. The CEO Øystein Rushfeldt carefully sought opportunities to conduct dialogues with interested parties, and the municipal authorities in Kvalsund welcomed industrial activity.

The company produced a digital model of the ore body that they use, to produce and represent geologic knowledge, to present convincing arguments about the feasibility of the project, to attract investors and to engineer the mining operations. Rushfeldt told me in an interview that it is ‘this model that is the value of the company’ (Interview, Alta 2015). The prospecting activity was among the main drivers in the public discourse, as the media frequently reported their findings. In October 2014, High North News claimed that

‘Nus-50 The Kautokeino and Central Lapland greenstone belts are the ones that sustain the

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sir had become even bigger’ (Storholm, September 30, 2014). By participat-ing in different venues over a course of time, I have seen how the presenta-tions by the CEO of Nussir ASA have changed according to the prospective knowledge extraction. The 3D models, diagrams and maps make it possible to envision the ore body and make it “real” in the social contexts where it is at work, for instance in transdisciplinary research workshops.

In October 2014, I observe and take notes at the research workshop,

‘Fate and Impact of Mine Tailings on Marine Arctic Ecosystems (MIKOS)’ at the Fram Centre in Tromsø. Everybody’s attention is focused on the projector screen, with a digital model of the Nussir ore body looking like a golden-metallic sheet of confectionary paper. ‘This site has been drilled since 1985—close to 200 drill holes at different depths,’ says Øystein Rushfeldt. By now, we know that the deposit is—

he turns and points at the model—that ‘piece of paper’ going down into the mountainside. Thin lines representing the drill holes pierce through the lean form. He rotates it, to the delight of the workshop attendants, and continues: ‘Since the Geological Survey of Norway is attending today, our great thanks to them and the state-sponsored pro-gramme, “Minerals in North Norway”. They have had a lot of activity in this area. It is obviously a great help for our understanding of the region’. (Field notes, Tromsø, October 14, 2014)⁵¹

The site Rushfeldt referred to in the above-mentioned seminar is an—un-til now—“untouched” mountain valley that I am going to visit in the next chapter. The Sámi name of that valley is Ásávaggi, and it is a calving land in reindeer grazing district 22, Fiettar (Fig 4.14). The reindeer herding district of Fiettar is familiar with the issues of coexistence between mining and reindeer herding. During the mining operation in the 1970s:

the disturbances resulted in that the reindeer eventually stayed away from this area and gathered in the western and southern parts of the summer grazing area. It was this period also registered lung disease at the reindeer. (Bjørklund, 2013, 418)

Here, I first look into the planning process, and I start with the proposal for the Assessment Programme and scoping plan that was put forward in 2008.

51 Fate and Impact of Mine Tailings on Marine Arctic Ecosystems, Framsenteret Tromsø, October 14-15, 2014, Akvaplan-niva, NIVA and NGU.

4 . 5 T H E C O P P E R M I N E P R O S P E C T I N K V A L -S U N D M U N I C I P A L I T Y

Nussir ASA commissioned the Finnmark office of the multinational con-sultancy firm, Sweco, to conduct the planning and application process. The scoping plan promised 150 jobs (including ripple effects). The municipality saw the prospect of mining as an opportunity but also a challenge, because they did not have the apparatus in place to handle big industrial projects.

The municipal council of Kvalsund municipality approved the assessment programme at the council meeting on July 20, 2010. Copper extraction and strong wind-power projects are literally in line to extract billions worth of monetary value from Kvalsund municipality, with almost a thousand inhabit-ants. Despite delight at the arrival of the big industries, this also poses chal-lenges to the small municipality.

‘We do not have enough competence in our municipality to take care of all the things we have to do to prepare for the things we will be facing in an industrial future,’ says deputy chairman of Kvalsund, Eli Liland (Sp). (Klo, March 31, 2011)

In retrospect, it has been claimed that the municipality rushed to this deci-sion and failed to do its job in programming the planning programme. See Dannevig and Dale (2018), for analysis of how a municipal decision to adapt an assessment programme leads to the realisation of large industrial projects.

Then a planning programme is produced that is subjected to public scrutiny.

Recent research (Nygaard, 2016; Dannevig and Dale, 2018) shows that the application process of the planning programme is the stage where local authorities can impact the process. If the planning programme is adapted, the prospector goes on to make a regulation plan and conducts an impact assess-ment, in which knowledge of the impacts of the prospect is collected; in this, the prospecting company commissions consultants to “extract knowledge of the externalities of the mine” (see Deneault and Sacher, 2012, 31).

Supporting opportunities for the mineral industry, the government encour-aged a balanced coexistence between reindeer herding and mining (see Bjørklund, 2016). Nussir ASA came to an agreement with the Sámi Parlia-ment on procedures for negotiations during the company’s application pro-cess. ‘If we succeed here, the whole world will follow,’ proclaimed the local paper, Altaposten, and cited Rushfeldt: ‘As soon as we, here in Norway, have reached an agreement with the Sámi Parliament and the reindeer industry,

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Fig 4.14: The Nussir copper mine prospect in the context of reindeer husbandry, coastal fishery, and mineral prospecting. Sources to the map are retrieved at Nussir.no, 2010, Kilden.no, and the Fennoscandian Ore Deposit Database.

others will follow’ (Eilertsen, November 4, 2010).’⁵² This attempt to get ac-cess to the reindeer pasture areas was not, however, agreed upon by the right holders—the affected reindeer owners and herders. In January 2016, the Sami Parliament Council announced that the agreement was no longer valid, but by then Nussir ASA had already rounded the critical milestones in the applica-tion process.

Corporations must work to secure their interests, especially so when consul-tative processes may reveal contradictions in needs and development (Prno, 2010). Nussir—the Norwegian Copper Company—successfully retained a social licence to operate when they needed it most at the beginning of the process to get the assessment programme approved in 2010 (Dannevig and Dale, 2018; Espiritu, 2015). Thereafter, followed years in which Nussir ASA secured milestones in the planning process and further explorations of the copper ore. During this period, the reindeer/boazu walked every autumn to the winter pastures in inner Finnmark, returning every spring to the summer lands. In the pastoral community, children grew up and learned to participate and behave confidently in the girdnu [the reindeer working fence] every spring and autumn.