‘Melting Worlds’ and ‘Climate Myths’: Diverging Stories of Climate Change in Longyearbyen, an Arctic ‘Frontline Community’

ABSTRACT

Climate change is a powerful story in Longyearbyen, the largest settlement on Svalbard in the high Arctic. While most natural science agrees on accelerating climate change with profound environmental impacts, this article unpacks the multidimensionality of the topic locally. By approaching climate change as a discourse, we explore the reception and reproduction of the dominant climate change discourse locally and compare it to other stories about climate change and adaptation. With this, we aim to contribute to the growing field of reception studies in anthropology. Our data, gathered through ethnographic fieldwork including interviews and informal conversations, include counterstories that nuance and contest the dominant climate change discourse. They point to over-simplification, sensationalism and the (mis)use of the climate discourse for other purposes. Such counterstories must be listened to in order to move in the direction of fair, inclusive, and transparent climate change politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change narratives
• reception studies
• Longyearbyen
• Svalbard

Vignette: The Only Story in Town?

‘Here we live with climate change every day.’ Former editor-in-chief of the local newspaper Svalbardposten made this statement during the book launch of Our Frozen Water (Helgesen & Holmén 2020) in September 2020 in Longyearbyen’s public library. Earlier the same day, a journalist assured us that ‘climate change is the only story in town’. The dominant media story, backed up by a growing body of research, depicts Longyearbyen on Svalbard in the high Arctic as the hotspot of climate change. The archipelago attracts journalists, film crews, politicians, artists, tourists and other visitors who are keen on learning what it feels like when climate change is happening fast, in front of your eyes. It is portrayed as an alarming example of a heavily impacted place (e.g. Watts 2019), often creating a sensationalist doomsday mood. Also locally produced and more nuanced accounts of how climate change is impacting life in Longyearbyen, like the book ‘My World is Melting’ by local journalist and writer Line Nagell Ylvisåker (2022), contribute to painting a picture of Longyearbyen as a ‘climate change frontier’ (Fraser 2019).

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (seedvault.no) embodies this narrative in a powerful visual way. It is a unique and costly infrastructure built by Norway in order to secure safe and free storage for seed duplicates world-wide, with the purpose of globally protecting vital crop seeds in case of urgency. It is a spectacular project that has received massive media attention and several awards, becoming a cultural meme, with the most recent representation in the latest book of Maja Lunde’s world-best-selling environmental dystopia quartet, The Dream of a Tree (2022). The Seed Vault was opened in 2008 with great expectations of endurance but had to close temporarily due to water intrusion. The leakage was explained by the impacts of permafrost thaw combined with rising average temperatures and abundant rainfall. Both national and international media reported about the calamity within the climate change framework, implying that Svalbard was once cold and therefore safe as an eternal storage spot from melting away (e.g. Carrington 2017).

The local voices, however, presented a different view. One of those heard also in the media was Arne Instanes, at the time he was an adjunct professor in geo-technology at UNIS (the University Center in Svalbard). Instances rejected the climate change narrative about the Seed Vault leakage as ‘a climate myth’ (Skjæraasen et al. 2021). While according to NRK (the Norwegian national broadcaster), immediate reparations due to climate change impacts required 193 million Norwegian kroner, there was a different problem causing the unexpected cost: ‘Bad planning and construction was the cause of the necessary maintenance after only 10 years, according to experts’ (Skjæraasen et al. 2021). The Norwegian government reacted with surprise to the news about planning and construction issues, but we – the writing anthropologists – were not astonished. In interviews with knowledge holders such as researchers, construction industry workers and building engineers, a view similar to the one of Instanes’ was often present:

Climate change did not really help the situation, but it was certainly not the most important factor. […] It is a known issue that construction activity causes damage in permafrost, which makes it behave differently than if we had left it in peace. (Skjæraasen et al. 2021)

Introduction: Ethnography Opening up for Multiple Stories

The story, or rather the stories introduced above, leads us to this article’s main aim: to explore multiple stories about climate change and adaptation in an Arctic climate change ‘frontline community’ (Rudiak-Gould 2013). The dominant linear discourse depicting Svalbard as either a climate change victim or a showcase of technological solutions, both locally produced and projected onto the place, contrasts with the multidimensionality of climate change narratives that we encountered in Longyearbyen. Not only are local stories more nuanced and complex than the dominant stories suggest, they sometimes also question and contest these narratives. While myth in anthropology refers to collective explanations of origin and conceptions of reality and have important social functions (Barnard & Spencer 1998: 386–389), Instanes’ ‘climate myth’ signifies a half-truth: blaming climate change for damaging buildings while leaving out other contributing factors, such as engineering mistakes or maladapted constructions. Here we listen to those minor stories (Katz 1996; Cruikshank 2005), in order to understand local climate change discourses in their complexity and multivocality. In so doing, we build on anthropological and related perspectives that approach climate change not only in its material but also in its discursive dimension as a social construct (e.g. Strauss & Orlove 2003; Hulme 2009), distinguishing between the physical processes of climate change and ‘the patterns of interpretation related to these processes that find resonance in society’ (Brüggemann & Rödder 2020: 3). In particular, we draw on and wish to contribute to what has been termed ‘reception studies’ (Rudiak-Gould 2011) in anthropological climate change research (see De Wit & Haines 2021 for a comprehensive review). Reception studies treat climate change as a ‘scientific narrative, discourse, or idea’ (De Wit & Haines 2021: 2) and examine how this narrative is received/rejected/reproduced locally. Here we take this approach to the local level and explore the reception of the dominant climate change discourse and compare it to other, more minor stories. Our aim is not to deem either narrative as true or false. Rather, we try to adopt a ‘listening disposition’ (Farbotko & Lazrus 2012: 5) with the goal of bringing dominant and minor stories about climate change in Longyearbyen into critical conversation. The relevance of this endeavour is given by the urgent need for societal transformation in the face of climate change. As human action depends on interpretations of the challenge at hand, ‘it is not only of academic interest, but also of practical importance to study local discourses about climate change’ (Brüggemann & Rödder 2020: 3). By reproducing one-sided climate change and adaptation narratives in places like Longyearbyen, we risk climate scepticism and a low level of trust in adaptation and mitigation measures. We thus follow Hulme’s (2010: xxvi) prompt: ‘If we are to understand climate change and if we are to use climate change constructively in our politics, we must first hear and understand these discordant voices, these multifarious human beliefs, values, attitudes, aspirations and behaviours’.

There is a scientific consensus that climate change is manifesting itself ever faster in Svalbard (Hanssen-Bauer et al. 2019), which justifies labelling the archipelago a climatic ‘canary in the mine’ (Rudiak-Gould 2013: 128). Our interlocutors mostly agree on having witnessed climate change-related processes, such as warming and increased humidity, melting (glaciers), thawing (permafrost), disappearing (sea ice, coastal line, cultural heritage), appearing (new species in water and on land, old species in higher numbers), and threatening (avalanches, landslides, extreme weather events). Here we go beyond the description of these observations and explore both the dominant and minor narratives associated with these physical phenomena, coloured by emotions, personal trajectories and values, or on a higher level by economic and (geo)political interests.

Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, we explore the dominant and minor stories about two main ‘characters’ of climate change in Longyearbyen – avalanches and glaciers. Our results show that there are multiple and often diverging stories about climate change and adaptation in Longyearbyen. There are minor stories that contest the official climate change and adaptation discourse, and the latter are often perceived locally to be influenced by and working to support certain values and interests. The minor stories about the avalanches reveal the perception that the climate change and adaptation discourse works to support increased state control over housing and population in Longyearbyen, and those about the glaciers contain critiques of the dominant climate change discourse as being over-simplifying and sensationalist. Both indicate that climate change is not the only story in town. We contextualise these minor stories by relating them to the other stories found in Longyearbyen, and show how they make sense when seen in relation to the bigger picture of changes that the town is undergoing. Climate change and adaptation in Longyearbyen is deeply intertwined with the structural changes from a mining to a service economy, as well as the Norwegian authorities’ efforts to maintain state control and a Norwegian settlement on Svalbard.

Longyearbyen, Svalbard: A Fast-Changing Town at 78 Degrees North

The stories we investigated were collected in Longyearbyen, a town with about 2500 inhabitants (Statistics Norway 2023) from more than 55 countries located at 78 degrees North. The town is currently undergoing major structural changes (Sokolíčková et al. 2022) that we argue constitute a crucial context for understanding current climate change and adaptation discourses. Longyearbyen was founded as a mining camp in 1906 and was run as a Norwegian state-funded and state-controlled coal mining company town until the late 1980s. Its economy has since then been diversified and liberalised. Unstable coal prices and the strong political will of the Norwegian government to cease coal extraction have led to a sharp decrease in mining and the last operating Norwegian coal mine is scheduled to close in 2025. Tourism and the service industry, and research and education are now the main economic ‘legs’ (Hovelsrud et al. 2020). Longyearbyen is the administrative centre of the archipelago of Svalbard, which is part of the Kingdom of Norway through the international agreement signed in 1920 (in force since 1925) known as the Svalbard Treaty. The main aim of Norway’s Arctic policies is to exercise sovereignty over Svalbard through Norwegian presence on the archipelago. Maintaining a ‘Norwegian family society’ (Meld. St. 32 2015–2016: 39) in Longyearbyen, is seen as a main tool for this ‘politics of presence’ (Pedersen 2017). The term ‘family society’ (familiesamfunn) originates in white papers about the ‘normalization’ of Longyearbyen, depicting the transition from an almost all-male mining settlement to a community resembling those on the mainland in terms of demography, welfare, and public services (Evjen 1996; Arlov & Holm 2001). With the phasing out of coal mining and the growth in tourism, research, and the service industry, the share of non-Norwegian inhabitants in Longyearbyen is increasing and is now over 30% (Statistics Norway 2023). These structural changes can be perceived as a challenge to Norwegian sovereignty over Svalbard (Pedersen 2017; Moe & Jensen 2020). We interpret direct and indirect signals such as increased state control over housing, stricter environmental regulations, and the proposed restrictions of voting rights for non-Norwegian inhabitants of Longyearbyen, as efforts to increase state control over and strengthen the Norwegian profile of Longyearbyen.

While Longyearbyen is often portrayed as a showcase for climate change, the Norwegian state and private entrepreneurs are making efforts to turn it into a showcase for the green transition and a hub of sustainable solutions in the Arctic. An important aspect of this is to transcend Svalbard’s fossil past. The state is currently spending almost 250 million NOK on a gigantic remediation project to return the former coal mining community of Svea to its ‘most untouched’ original state (Store Norske 2022), creating a ‘social drama’ and marking Norwegian presence by human absence (Ødegaard 2021). Mine 7 in Longyearbyen that produces coal for the local energy plant and exports coal for industry, is scheduled to close in 2025, and the local power plant stopped running on coal in October 2023. The decision was made by the local government and the state with the aim of establishing a ‘more climate friendly’ energy source for Longyearbyen (Regjeringen.no 2021). These efforts by Norway to present itself as a ‘climate nation’ impact on both the production and reception of the climate change discourse in Longyearbyen (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Longyearbyen on 78° North. Map by Jakub Žárský.

From Observations to Reception: Theorising Climate Change as a Contested Idea, a Discourse, and a Story

Anthropological research on climate change and the Anthropocene has established that climate change has material and cultural dimensions (e.g. Crate 2011; Crate & Nuttall 2009; Hastrup 2013; Baer & Singer 2014; Barnes & Dove 2015; Moore 2015). Studies exploring the latter have focused on perceptions of change and their related cultural meanings and values (e.g. Strauss & Orlove 2003; Cruikshank 2005; Crate 2008; Roncoli et al. 2009), and are increasingly exploring the discursive dimensions of climate change. Here we draw on research that approaches climate change as a (scientific) narrative, a discourse, or an idea that is constructed, imagined, and applied (e.g. Hulme 2009; Rudiak-Gould 2011; Thornton & Mahli 2016; De Wit & Haines 2021).

This framing directs attention to how the powerful climate change discourse is received locally, an approach that anthropologist Rudiak-Gould (2011) has termed ‘reception studies’ (De Wit & Haines 2021). While most anthropologists do ‘observation studies’, focusing on how communities ‘become aware of global warming through first-hand observation of local impacts’ (Rudiak-Gould 2011: 9), reception studies ‘have contributed to understanding contextual factors through empirical examples and ethnographies of the uptake, translation, and/or rejection of scientific climate change discourse’ (De Wit & Haines 2021: 1). They include the examination of ‘patterns of interpretation about climate change’ that ‘might depart from the frames provided by elite sources that populate media coverage’ (Brüggemann & Rödder 2020: 6) and ‘why locals choose to trust or distrust the scientific discourse of global warming’ (Rudiak-Gould 2011: 9). This approach emphasises the ‘localness of global-warming discourse’ (Rudiak-Gould 2011: 10), and there is empirical evidence that the climate change discourse is impacting local environmental observations and perceptions (Rudiak-Gould 2014). In addition to examining local understandings of climate change, anthropologists and other social scientists thus turn their attention to how these understandings engage with and vary from transnational and scientific discourses, how ‘aspects of the travelling idea of climate change are well-received, integrated, transformed, or rejected’ (Brüggemann & Rödder 2020: 1). Case studies show that people locally evaluate and make sense of the idea of climate change and the related discourses in different ways. Reception ranges from general acceptance (Engels et al. 2013) and belief to incredulity (Rudiak-Gould 2011), ignorance (Norgaard 2011) and rejection (De Wit 2020). The climate change discourse has also been found to be criticised and contested by ‘those it seeks to name’ (Farbotko & Lazrus 2012). Importantly, the rejection of the climate change discourse does not necessarily equal ignorance. Rather, it has been found to be an expression of resistance: ‘an attempt to remain faithful to one’s own set of norms, values, beliefs, principles of causality and “cosmological configuration”’ (De Wit 2020: 164). Climate change denial among white, conservative men in the United States for instance, has been found to be an expression of protecting group identity and justifying a societal system that provides desired benefits (McCright & Dunlap 2011), possibly as ‘part of a larger attitude complex expressing resistance against changing societal conditions’ (Krange et al. 2019). Social inertia, the ‘failure of societies to respond in a concerted, meaningful way to climate change’ (Brulle & Norgaard 2019: 1), can thus be understood as resistance to large-scale social changes to avoid the threat of cultural trauma (Brulle & Norgaard 2019).

Reception studies make sense in Longyearbyen not only because it is a prominent ‘frontline community’ (Rudiak-Gould 2013), but also because it is a location where climate change discourse is produced through science and media. When we speak about ‘climate change discourse’, we refer to the scientific consensus that the world’s climate is changing because of anthropogenic influence, which has a direct impact on the natural environment. People outside the scientific community are exposed to this discourse through media and policies. As the discourse is being reproduced by governments and intergovernmental bodies, it has attained an ‘almost hegemonic status’ that tends to exclude the voices of other stakeholders and alternative discourses (Taylor 2013).

In their comprehensive review of reception studies, De Wit and Haines (2021) identified as one major theme anthropologists’ efforts to ‘pluralize [sic] reception’, focusing on alterity, refusal, and change (De Wit & Haines 2021: 9–11). We share the premise of these studies: that ‘different ways of being and knowing should be taken seriously, and that caution is warranted when hierarchies and purifications of knowledge and truth are pursued, often based on singular claims to scientific objectivity’ (De Wit & Haines 2021: 10). Whereas anthropologists have tended to focus on non-Western societies and emphasised the need to recognise different ontologies in the study of climate change, we examine counterstories to the dominant climate change discourse in a Western context. Together with O’Reilly et al. (2020), we see anthropology as a discipline that reflects over ‘relationships among scientists, publics and decision makers’ (De Wit & Haines 2021: 17), and ourselves as ‘concerned with the possibility of different worlds’ (De Wit & Haines 2021: 18). This notion of multiplicity of worlds (and thus also perceptions and interpretations) is rather unusual in Longyearbyen where some ways of ‘making sense’ are much more politically powerful than others. Here, as in many other contexts, the transnational climate change discourse is embraced by most and influences how local weather and climate-related phenomena are interpreted. It is one of the key tasks of anthropology today to explore ‘uneven histories, discourses and political economies’ related to the encounters of local societies concerning climate change (Whitaker 2020: 846), and we will thus explore dominant discourses in relation to other, minor stories.

We use the concept of ‘discourse’ in a Foucauldian sense (Foucault 1972) referring ‘to the ways in which social practices that frame events draw on particular sets of ideas, concepts or categories that are then produced, reproduced or altered, informing how people relate to each other and the non-human world’ (Farbotko & Lazrus 2012: 383). Discourse is closely related to ‘narrative’, which in the social sciences mostly refers to ‘constructed, formal, and official cases, e.g. what institutions generate and reflect in general discourse about an issue’ (Moezzi et al. 2017: 3). They ‘are often present in printed form and written or told by professionals, often in public, versus the less formal stories that everybody exchanges more privately orally or in personal correspondence’ (Moezzi et al. 2017: 3). Stories, in this sense, tend to be more local and ephemeral than narratives. Inspired by Katz’ (2017) invitation to look for the ‘“whole other stories vibrating within” the claims and arguments of major theory’ (Katz 2017: 598), we give voice to those other and minor stories about climate change in Longyearbyen.

Methodology

Longyearbyen is framed both from the outside and from within as a scene of change (see the collection of articles ‘Changing Svalbard’ in Polar Record). We, too, arrived to research how it feels to live with these changes, how they are perceived and how they impact locally. We soon realised how much focus and attention the phenomenon of climate change attracts. Climate change is often used as a buzzword in scientific applications and project descriptions, including our own. We became aware of how we were looking for stories of change. What we met in the field, though, was far from the alarming and straightforward story we had expected. The picture we paint, based on ethnographic documentation, is more nuanced, complex and messy. First, there were more ‘stories’ to cover and the one about climate change was not the most urgent for many of our informants. And second, there are multiple perspectives to look at climate change in Longyearbyen; while some are loud, others are silent. A word about our own positionality is in order here. We do not doubt that climate change is human-induced. However, as anthropologists, we need to take seriously and try to understand perspectives that counter the dominant climate change discourse. We believe that in order for climate change policies to be fair and successful, they must be aware of and try to understand also these discordant perspectives.

Our projects were developed independently, but as we found ourselves studying the same issues in the same community simultaneously, we soon began collaborating on a variety of projects. For this article, we draw on independently gathered data, partly already analysed. The advantage of this approach was that we could draw on a broader sample and validate each other’s analyses. We then picked interview passages and fieldwork experiences which contained various counterstories of climate change and analysed them together. We structured the analysis around diverging views about two prominent topics, avalanches hitting the town and melting glaciers. The writing was also done in collaboration and the text evolved as we discussed our findings and received external feedback.

Our interviews were qualitative and open-ended, structured around topics of personal background and relationship to Svalbard, the community, and the experienced changes. Whereas in other locations it might make sense to avoid talking about climate change (Marino & Schweitzer 2008), in Longyearbyen this topic is so omnipresent that it came naturally to address it when asking about change. Addressing the topic opened up conversations and led to critical reflections about the climate change discourse. A typical interview lasted 90 minutes and took place in the home of the interviewee or in one of the local cafés. The multifaceted stories of change we gathered are also a result of our diverse pool of conversation partners. In addition to the usual ‘stakeholders’, we reached out to the population across the categories of job, age, gender, education, country of origin, or position in power structures. Even more importantly, we met our participants without any presumption of relevance or validity of their perception and interpretation of climate change. Over the course of long-term fieldwork (2018–2021) we took part in the town’s life, engaged in numerous informal conversations and built relationships, and conducted more than 300 audio-recorded meetings in the form of formal expert, semi-structured and narrative interviews, and focus groups.

Character 1: Avalanches

The Dominant Discourse: Climate Change Causes Risk and Fear; Adaptation Through Security Measures Creates Safety

On Saturday, December 19, 2015, an avalanche crashed down Sukkertoppen, one of the mountains above Longyearbyen. It was late morning – the town was still waking when the mass of snow smashed into the houses. A two-year-old girl and a father died. On February 21, 2017, another avalanche came down the same mountain and destroyed two apartment buildings. During a period of heavy rain in the autumn of 2016, there was a landslide near the graveyard and another affecting the town dog kennel. Time and again, the residents of Longyearbyen have had to leave their homes: when floods threatened mud slides, when torrential rain increased the risk of devastating flows of slush from the mountainsides, and when winter winds threatened to send avalanches into town. (Ylvisåker 2022: 7)

The opening lines of My world is melting: To live with climate change in Svalbard written by local journalist Line Nagell Ylvisåker explain the author’s urgent need to find out what is happening with her home and to address the sorrow and puzzlement of Longyearbyen’s residents whose feeling of safety was shattered. The fatal avalanche of 2015 is a powerful meme reproduced in the ephemeral collective memory of the town that we encountered multiple times in the field. On 22 March 2019, a large group of UNIS students and pupils at Longyearbyen school joined in on the international climate strike and arranged a march and speeches in the town’s main square. The initiative gained attention in national and international news as ‘the world’s northernmost climate strike’ (Gulliksen Tømmerbakke 2019), and was even re-tweeted by Greta Thunberg. The message from the representative of the school pupils, who gave a passionate speech, was clear and in line with the Fridays for Future argument: His generation will suffer most from climate change, and the politicians in charge have to take action to stop it. He emphasised that on Svalbard, his generation is already living with climate change. Alluding to the avalanches, he exclaimed that ‘Two lives taken by climate change is enough!’, a quote that made headlines in the local newspaper Svalbardposten the same day (Solberg 2019).

The avalanches of 2015 and 2017 mark a great rupture in the recent history of Longyearbyen. They gave rise to a strong discourse of risk and safety, the latter became a top political priority. The dominant discourse depicts natural hazards as a consequence of climate change, and securitisation measures through engineering and technical solutions as necessary climate change adaptation measures. This discourse is visible in state White Papers, produced and reproduced by the Municipality Council, and picked up by both local and national/international media.

All of a sudden we have a huge avalanche that kills people. Of course climate change is a substantial part of that, even if there were avalanches before. But in 2017, when the second avalanche hits, […] they cannot predict it, because they rely on old assumptions, old parameters, old history. So climate change has been there and changed the premises. […] And here we touch on another consequence of not considering environmental change. All of a sudden you have fear in society. […] And people seek safety and if you don’t have safety, then you don’t have people. […] So what I’m saying is that the government needs to take climate change seriously and be able to adapt. […] If they were not willing to invest in society by building avalanche security measures, then we will have to shut down large parts [of society]. […] Generally, I would say that people feel safe because they see that the government acts, they see that measures are being taken, they see that the town is being moved, they see that we build avalanche security measures and things like that. (Interview with employee in the administration of Longyearbyen Municipality Council, 12 April 2019)

The discourse on risk and fear as a consequence of climate change is used to legitimise ‘taking measures’ for substantial avalanche protection. Monitoring and warning systems have been established, and evacuations from risk zones occur regularly. Houses in the avalanche risk zone have been demolished, snow drift and avalanche fences are being built, along with a protective wall (Sydnes et al. 2021). Although generally portrayed as successful climate change adaptation (Albrechtsen et al. 2022), locally we find minor stories that contest this dominant narrative.

Minor Stories of State Control and ‘Norwegianisation’

In our search for an understanding of how people in Longyearbyen are impacted by climate change, both authors repeatedly came across concern and frustration related not so much to the natural hazards themselves, but to the safety measures taken against them, often labelled as climate change adaptation. Different criticisms are repeated: the measures are an ‘overkill’ (too many and too much), they are too extensive and expensive, they destroy the visual identity of the town, or are a hysterical reaction to a phenomenon ‘that has always existed’. People were critical of the fact that houses were demolished in the avalanche zone in addition to the construction of avalanche fences and a wall. Digging deeper, a minor story about state control and the Norwegianization of Longyearbyen emerged.

When exploring how the avalanche has been portrayed in the media but also in the local collective memory, it is noticeable that some segments of Longyearbyen’s population are marginal or not visible at all. People remembering the event first-hand often recall the spirit of solidarity that emerged in the community immediately after the avalanche. Representatives of some ethnic minorities, however, have a different take on the disaster. For example, our Thai and Philippine participants shared their general concerns about climate change, but often also expressed a different concern. As the zone where the snow mass hit was identified as risky, numerous housing units were demolished and their inhabitants (many of them from Thailand and the Philippines) were forced to move out. As one Thai woman put it: ‘They are chasing us away!’ (Interview with a Thai woman, 29 March 2019)

In our fieldwork diaries, we documented how our non-Norwegian interlocuters made sense of the climate change discourse and the avalanche risk, and related it to the government’s wish to norwegianise (fornorske) Longyearbyen.

I sent my friend Christian a picture of my screen with responses to a survey about permafrost impacts, with an answer that had amused me. Christian did not comment on the passage I had highlighted. Instead he commented on another passage where the interviewee stated that ‘Buildings have to be torn down in Longyearbyen because of climate change and permafrost thaw’. He wrote: ‘No houses on Svalbard are torn down because of thawing permafrost. That is a myth. They are torn down in order to get people out of here’. Later I picked up on this, asking him to explain. In his view, tearing down these houses is a means for ‘getting rid of foreigners’, and for the government to gain control over housing. (Authort’s fieldnotes, 13 May 2020)

Again, the notion of ‘myth’ was used to describe what was perceived as a climate change-related misconception. The avalanche safety measures are interpreted by some as a ‘sneaky way for the government to gain control’ over the housing stock in Longyearbyen, as one local scientist put it. She went on to explain how this effort is closely related to the current tendency to curtail the ratio of non-Norwegian inhabitants in town. To make sense of this minor story, we have to consider the avalanches in their larger societal context.

In the recent decades, Longyearbyen has undergone drastic structural changes, from a coal-mining company town to a post-extractivist economy based on tourism, research and education. These sectors, as well as the related service industry, attract an international workforce, and thus the economic restructuring has resulted in profound demographic changes (Moe & Jensen 2020). From the perspective of Norwegian Svalbard policies, in which Longyearbyen is a ‘tool of diplomacy’ (Hacquebord & Avango 2009: 36) for maintaining and legitimising Norwegian sovereignty over Svalbard, the increasingly international population of Longyearbyen constitutes a dilemma and even a security issue (Pedersen 2017). In addition, the private housing market is very limited, and most of the housing stock is owned by the big employers, making it difficult for people working in smaller companies in the tourist and service industry to find housing. The situation worsened significantly when, in 2018, the local government decided to demolish almost 140 housing units due to avalanche risk, a decision officially presented as a measure of climate change adaptation (e.g. Rapp 2019/2020). The lost housing stock was only partially replaced by new state-owned housing in the neighbourhood of Gruvedalen. Our fieldwork data contains interview passages and observations which indicate that avalanche risk adaptation became entangled with the state’s strategy of regaining control over housing. Our interviewees working in public administration and science or voluntary work for non-governmental organisations involved in the evacuations after the 2015 avalanche remembered the Asian migrants living in the endangered houses:

As long as people speak English it’s ok but if they don’t, it’s a problem. I saw that when we had the avalanche here. People were hiding […] when we were coming to get people out of the houses […] we tried to talk to them and they didn’t get it. (Interview with Magnus, 10 October 2019)

Not only was there an issue with a language barrier, there were also more people actually living in the housing units than recorded in the population register. When the Norwegian prime Minister Erna Solberg paid a visit to Longyearbyen in early 2020, shortly before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic (which made the housing situation even more urgent than ever), she voiced her concern to the local newspaper Svalbardposten: ‘When it comes to housing policy, we first made large investments related to protection against avalanches and landslides. Now it is important that we have good control over housing construction, in addition to having good control over who lives here’ (Wiersen 2020). It became clear that housing policy is part of the state’s strategy developed to increase the ratio of Norwegian residents without allowing for the settlement’s growth. In light of this, we began to understand the minor stories about how the demolition of houses is an expression of efforts to increase state control over housing and to reduce the non-Norwegian population in Longyearbyen. This interpretation became more widespread during the course of our fieldwork when state efforts to increase control intensified (Sokolíčková & Soukupová 2021; Brode-Roger et al. 2022).

Character 2: Glaciers

The Dominant Discourse: Svalbard’s Melting Glaciers as a Showcase for Rapid Climate Change

In 2019, a glacier photography project by a glaciology student and a guide on Svalbard made headlines in the public broadcasting NRK: ‘Watch how the glaciers on Svalbard have retreated during the past 100 years’ (Hirsti & Digernes-Nordström 2019). The pictures show Svalbard glaciers photographed from the same spot approximately one hundred years apart and depict impressive glacial retreat. The glaciology student, Erik Schytt Holmlund, who has been living on Svalbard for almost four years, said to NRK he is ‘being reminded of climate change every day’.

As Julie Cruikshank elaborates in Do glaciers listen? (2005), glaciers are emblematic of climate change, since their retreating is so powerfully visual. They are popular examples of climate change ‘visibilism’ (Rudiak-Gould 2013) and are often referred to as the image and proof of climate change on Svalbard. One of our interview partners, who moved back to Longyearbyen after many years on the mainland, described how she experienced the retreat of the glaciers Longyearbreen and Larsbreen just outside of Longyearbyen:

It has melted a lot, ice is very visible, and the glaciers and stuff have melted, a lot. I remember when we were students [starting in 1996] and went up to Larsbreen, that glacier was right behind Brakke 13, it was right there. Now you have to walk very far. And the same with Longyearbreen. You just drove right up the hill and then you were on the glacier, right. And now … I got a huge shock when I came up in 2018 and was driving up there, hadn’t driven there for many years, and then we were supposed to drive up and then like [pause] ‘where is the glacier?!’ [laughs]. Really crazy. Many hundreds of meters have melted. That journalist asked how people are impacted [by climate change] in town, and that’s it. It is also that when we go up towards Larsbreen, we always used to walk below that cliff, and this year the whole side slid out. That is the first time. (Interview with meteorologist, 13 July 2020)

This dominant story is found in our field notes and in countless media reports about Svalbard and is important in defining the Svalbard imaginary. As elaborated by Brode-Roger (2021), the Arctic is often portrayed as a vulnerable place defined by climate change through projected and romanticised images of starving polar bears and melting ice, an uninhabited terra nullius.¹ These reports often depict retreating glaciers in an aesthetic way, as mighty giants cracking and melting as the climate warms. Their beauty and tragic symbolism inspires last-chance tourists (Johnston et al. 2011) to visit Svalbard before they disappear. Svalbard guides we have spoken to confirm that tourists are interested in seeing this proof of climate change: ‘Of course I see changes in glaciers, that is the most common question of the guests: “The glaciers, are they retreating?” Yes, we can see that even in this short time’ (Interview with tour guide, 15 June 2019).

An important aspect of this dominant discourse is the risk melting glaciers pose to people who travel in the Svalbard landscape. ‘Don’t rely on “safe glaciers”’, a Svalbardposten headline read in January 2021, where four researchers with local experience informed readers about recent trends in the development of Svalbard glaciers (Kohler et al. 2021). Some of the massive newly discovered crevasses were indeed recent, some got exposed due to the snow cover loss induced by extreme temperatures in summer 2020 when it was almost 22 degrees in Svalbard (Kubny 2020). The chronicle shows graphs documenting the negative glacier mass balance, together with a map of surging glaciers that also pose a threat to the safety of skiers, mushers or snowmobile drivers crossing areas that in the collective memory are believed to be safe.

The stories about Svalbard glaciers used to communicate the facts about climate change range from sensationalist, simplistic depictions to attempts to use local stories and data to communicate change without hiding the complexity of the issue, what Rudiak-Gould (2013: 128) has called ‘constructive visibilism’. However, there is a tendency to emphasise the clear-cut data series, to highlight the instances where change is unequivocally visible, at the expense of more complex and ambiguous examples. Consider this passage from an interview with a meteorologist:

It is like they say, that it has gotten warmer and warmer. So it was almost a shame that March was under the normal [temperature average], because if not we would’ve had more than 111 months over the normal, and then came the 0.5 under the normal, right. ‘Oh, now there is no global warming after all!’ [laughs], and then came the next month and was over [the normal] again. So it has been a very long warm period for many months. That is what we have seen since I came in the 1990s. Back then there was ice on the fjords, we just drove straight out to Forlandssundet and up to Ny-Ålesund on snowmobiles. (Interview with meteorologist, 13 July 2020)

In this example, the Svalbard temperature trend is an indicator of climate change which is easily communicated. It would have been a perfect example had it not been for the one month that broke the trend.

Minor Stories Criticising the Climate Change ‘Hype’

I was out at a dinner and sitting next to a Norwegian construction worker who has lived on Svalbard for 13 years – let’s call him Leif – whom I had interviewed several months ago about permafrost thaw. We were talking about my research when he told me: ‘You know what, here’s a story for you, Fridtjovfbreen in ‘96. That glacier surged 3 kilometers. But no one speaks about that’. He went on sharing his frustration over researchers that come up to Svalbard ‘like dayflies, taking only one picture and saying that this is climate change’. He said that there is no doubt that it is getting warmer, but it irritates him that so many people – scientists and journalists – come up here to look for climate change, a story that, in his opinion, is overly exaggerated by the media. (Author’s fieldnotes, 18 June 2021)

Alongside the dominant story about melting glaciers as the showcase for climate change, we find minor ones that contest, criticise, or even reject this discourse. We find expressions of annoyance and irritation in response to these dramatic depictions of a melting Svalbard, and counterstories of glacial surges that attempt to relativise the dominant narrative of glacial loss. What Cruikshank (2005) writes about glaciers thus applies well to the Svalbard context. They are both a visual indicator of climate change but open to ambiguous interpretations:

Concerns about global climate change are giving glaciers new meaning for many people who may previously have considered them eternally frozen, safely distant, and largely inert. Most of the world’s glaciers now seem to be melting rather than reproducing themselves, becoming a new kind of endangered species, a cryospheric weather vane for potential natural and social upheaval. Encounters with glaciers during times of rapid environmental change produce diverse interpretations. (Cruikshank 2005: 7–8)

Interestingly, these counterstories are hardly ever about climate change denial; melting glaciers are an obvious fact for most people. Scientists agree that the glacier-mass balance on Svalbard is negative and it is unlikely the trend will change anytime soon (Geyman et al. 2022). There are even studies showing that surging glaciers also can be caused by processes related to climate change (Sevestre et al. 2018). In our interpretation, the stories about surging glaciers or about natural cycles causing both glacial surge and retreat are rather about downplaying what some perceive to be a sensationalist and alarmist story. There are different nuances and motivations behind this apparent need to downplay the urgency of the dominant narrative. While scientific reports are nuanced, the way glaciers are being portrayed in the media is often one-sided; attention is paid to the retreating, not the surging process. This tendency to simplify depictions of climate change on Svalbard is identified in the quote above from the meteorologist. An uninterrupted Svalbard temperature trend would have contributed to an even more powerful example of climate change visibilism. However, if a one-sided story of climate change does not match the locals’ complex and often ambiguous perceptions of changes in their immediate environment, many feel a need to counterbalance the alarmist story. This is what Leif does by highlighting a surging glacier. He also resorts to visibilism, but to prove the opposite point. We interpret this not as an expression of climate change denial (even though we have spoken to deniers who use the exact same example), but rather to break the one-sided sensationalist climate change narrative, pointing out that things are more complex, that there are exceptions and variations but that these are rarely represented in the media and in dominant stories about a changing Svalbard.

The frustration over the constant focus on climate change in media representations of Svalbard is expressed in this quote by a long-term resident:

Yes, there is a lot of focus on [climate change]. Much ink has been spilt over climate change up here. Because you notice it especially well up here. So one gets tired of reading and hearing about it, one really does. (Interview with miner who grew up and still lives on Svalbard, 10 July 2020)

Not only do people get tired of media reports of Svalbard as a ‘climate change victim’ some are also tired of being asked about climate change by journalists and researchers, such as this construction worker we interviewed:

Regarding what you were asking about, climate change and our challenges with construction and such, it is less than what people think. Because you are not the first one here to ask about these things. People come and are looking for the big bomb, but no, I don’t have it. (Interview with construction worker, 3 March 2020)

In general, research fatigue in relation to climate change among Longyearbyen residents is common. The slight impatience regarding the constant focus on climate change in Svalbard is related to a sentiment shared by many. Namely, that the climate change victim story often overshadows other issues and changes going on in Longyearbyen. As one miner put it:

We are having a lot of visits by politicians and other groups that are coming to look … But they are more interested in going up to see the glaciers calving and saying like ‘oh, that’s climate change’. (Interview with miner, 3 September 2019)

For long-term residents especially, and for people who are either connected to the fossil fuel industry or ‘just’ the town’s previous era, the radical transformation of Longyearbyen from a coal mining company town to a post-industrial, international tourist hub, and the social and cultural changes accompanying this shift are often perceived as more life-changing than climate change. In the quote above, the miner notes that politicians coming to Longyearbyen are more interested in witnessing climate change than addressing other issues that are affecting life in Svalbard. As the journalist quoted in the vignette put it, climate change is often portrayed as ‘the only story in town’. This (mis)representation neglects other factors that many locals feel impact their lives equally or more, such as the termination of the mining industry, the pre-Covid housing crisis (Meyer 2022: 94), or growing social inequalities (Sokolíčková 2022). Portraying Svalbard in a reductionist, ‘simplified, mono-story way’ (Brode-Roger 2021: 497) makes it part of a wider tendency to represent the Arctic as a climate change victim in need of protection. Such a story casts a shadow over the particularities of places and the complexities of the region and disregards the lived experience of its inhabitants.

In Longyearbyen, another factor contributes to this. The coal mining industry is currently being phased out, a political decision legitimised with reference to climate change and the need to transition towards a fossil-free society (regjeringen.no 2021). People connected to the mining industry in Longyearbyen feel that the fossil fuel industry and thus their livelihood is being blamed for climate change. The climate change counterstories we encountered in our conversations with miners could thus be interpreted as a form of resistance to the transformation of a societal system that has provided desired benefits and an attempt to protect group identity (McCright & Dunlap 2011). Another facet of the negotiation of the dominant story about melting glaciers is found in the following interview with a long-term resident:

I have a bit of a problem with what I perceive as all the hype about it [climate change], like going to a calving glacier and say that ‘wow, there is a polar bear that has to swim’. There are some silly things as well when it comes to Svalbard and climate change. […] I am maybe a bit more concerned that we live more environmentally friendly and more in tune with nature, and if Svalbard can contribute to strengthen our awareness in that regard then I think that it is worth it, but preferably not in the form of the polar bear on an ice floe and the calving glaciers … . (Interview with long-term resident, 29 April 2020)

In her opinion, the dominant glacier story contributes to climate change ‘hype’, while environmental issues not related to climate change and perhaps possible to solve by local initiatives, challenging as they might be, such as the garbage or waste water disposal, receive less attention.

Discussion

The dominant climate change discourse surrounding Svalbard is both binary (either-or) and linear: Longyearbyen and its inhabitants transition from being climate victims to climate pioneers, as Norway puts its coal mining industry behind it and promotes a green and emission-free Svalbard future. Our ethnography, however, shows that the story is not black-and-white. Our interlocuters hold complex perceptions of change, and we find a multitude of other stories that sometimes contest the dominant discourse. Treating climate change not only in its materiality but also as an idea (Hulme 2009) that is constantly negotiated and embedded in politics, values, worldviews, and agendas opens it to investigation of the multiple, minor stories we find in our data. Exploring not only which changes people perceive, but also how they interpret the climate change discourse (Rudiak-Gould 2011; 2014) allows us to treat the dominant discourse as one story among other competing versions. It enables us to look at this discourse as something both ‘coming from the outside’ and ‘produced from within’. Climate change is a global phenomenon with regional impacts, used by national governments supported by international science, and lived by local inhabitants. As we have shown, stories narrated by Longyearbyen’s inhabitants are not all of a piece.

The dominant discourse, especially regarding avalanches and subsequent safety measures, deals with climate change risks and the need to restore safety (presented as climate change adaptation) through physical adaptations. While the counterstories do not dispute the avalanche risk and the need for safety measures, they point to how these measures lead to increased state control over housing in Longyearbyen and can be interpreted as part of a larger effort to reduce the international presence in Longyearbyen. Recalling Hulme (2009), the juxtapositioning of these diverging stories demonstrates how the (dominant) climate change discourse can serve different purposes. Listening to these counterstories enables us to understand the climate change and adaptation discourse in its larger political context. It points to how seemingly non-political climate change adaptation measures are related to the exercise of state power, such as regaining state control over housing and who lives where a policy that renders the non-Norwegian segment of the population vulnerable.

The dominant discourse surrounding Svalbard glaciers is a story of climate change exemplified by images of glacial retreat that identify Svalbard as a climate change hotspot. The counterstories do not deny glacial retreat or climate change, but express irritation regarding the sensationalist and often simplifying tone of this dominant climate victim story. These concerns echo similar findings from other ‘frontline communities’ such as Greenland (Eriksen 2020). They express the widely shared sentiment that the climate change ‘hype’ surrounding Svalbard tends to create an image of the archipelago that is far removed from peoples’ lived experiences which are shaped by other changes and processes in addition to climate change. Longyearbyen is undergoing profound societal changes and climate change is brought forward as an argument by local and national authorities to close down the mining industry and transition to a ‘sustainable society’. Rejecting the dominant climate change discourse can thus be read not as climate change denial but as an expression of resistance to profound societal changes threatening societal positions, jobs and identities (McCright & Dunlap 2011; Krange et al. 2019), a transformation that is locally perceived as initiated by bureaucrats far away and with little knowledge of local conditions and consequences (Sokolíčková et al. 2022). These counterstories show that climate change is not the only story in town. As an artist in residence working on issues of climate change in Longyearbyen in spring 2022 put it, the dominant climate change discourse works as a canvas that depicts one story of Svalbard while concealing others. In the eyes of many, because of the strong focus on climate change in dominant representations of Svalbard, topics such as growing social inequalities or local environmental problems (such as unfiltered sewage running into the fjord or the extreme use of cars) receive less attention. This is also a lesson for researchers of climate change: Our preoccupation – sometimes bordering on obsession – with climate change can lead us to highlight dominant stories while downplaying other issues. To be aware of this is not to diminish the importance of climate change, but to contribute to an ethnography that is more sensitive to complex life worlds. Furthermore, this climate change ‘canvas’ is very much represented as apolitical. From the counterstories we learn, however, that the dominant climate change and adaptation discourses are intertwined with other stories in town that serve political purposes, whether intended or not. Our findings thus show that even in a place like Longyearbyen, where the impacts of a changing climate are most pronounced, there is not one single story about climate change. They demonstrate that living with environmental change neither results in the same perceptions of the phenomenon, nor necessarily in identical concerns about climate change. Rather, the data indicate that people directly experiencing climate change in some cases downplay the alarmist tone that often accompanies the climate change discourse projected onto Svalbard from the outside.

Our research furthermore shows that there are certain climate change discourses that are more likely to be expressed by parts of the Longyearbyen population than others. For instance, long-term residents connected to the mining industry are often more sceptical than local scientists. The phenomenon of climate change denial in Longyearbyen, to the extent that it is present and linked to threats to ways of life posed by the closing of the mining industry, is a phenomenon worth exploring further. A thorough analysis of the dominant climate change and adaptation discourses and the politics in which they are embedded is an exciting yet controversial endeavour. Exposing the politics and worldviews underlying climate change and adaptation policies could be misread as efforts to cast doubt on the reality of anthropogenic climate change, by fuelling sceptical claims of ‘elite’ knowledge spreading untruths about climate change to serve left-wing political agendas. This should, however, not stand in the way of critical inquiry, and while maintaining that anthropogenic climate change is real, anthropologists can critically examine how humans use and make sense of this phenomenon, without, in the words of Hochachka (2022: 519) ‘getting stuck in the cul-de-sacs of epistemological relativism and post-truth politics’.

Conclusions

The story about the seed vault threatened by climate change propagated by mainstream media in the image of a melting Svalbard is by others debunked as a ‘climate myth’ and criticised as part of the ‘climate cliché’ often projected onto the place. This, and the other examples presented in this article, illustrate that the dominant climate change discourse is one story among many. By pointing to over-simplification, sensationalism and the (mis)use of the climate discourse for other purposes, these minor stories comprise a contestation and critique of the dominant climate change discourse, which may ultimately lead to scepticism and a rejection of the discourse altogether. The official climate change discourse loses credibility among people who feel their versions are suppressed in the dominant narratives. This feeling of being neglected is paired with a feeling of not being part of the solution. Reproducing a one-sided (re-)presentation of places like Longyearbyen could lead to a low level of trust in and even rejection of adaptation and mitigation measures. Propagating one dominant discourse without listening to the multiplicity of stories, lived experiences and perceptions of climate change that are present may thus ultimately harm the sustainability cause. The minor stories furthermore reveal unequal power relations and social inequalities and that ‘climate victims’ like Longyearbyen have other problems in addition to climate change that need to be solved. Combating climate change in isolation from social inequalities is not a viable solution.

The implication is that both the official climate change discourse and the related transition towards a more sustainable society cannot be ‘owned’ by just a few, and certainly not by those far away from the places where transitions are to be implemented. To Hulme’s (2010) call to listen to diverse voices in developing climate change policies we would also add that different perspectives must be part of shaping transition policies. The climate change discourse and related measures must be honest, transparent and inclusive, allowing for multiple stories. This is also where we see one of anthropology’s contributions to climate change science. We have shown how personal perceptions intertwine with the official discourse and how multiple perspectives exist in Svalbard. We agree with Milton (1997: 486) that ‘at the level of perception, truth is not an issue. Perceptions cannot be false; people simply perceive what enters their consciousness. What they make of it, through interpretation, is a different matter’. Yet we are reluctant to claim that our research ought to identify who ‘owns the truth’ about climate change in Longyearbyen. In her seminal article ‘Thinking like a climate’, Hannah Knox (2015) discusses possibilities for a shift from the struggle for the truth to actual climate change politics. In her statements that ‘in climate science, society itself is visible in climate data’ and ‘all climate science is necessarily political’ (Knox 2015: 97-98) we recognise our own commitment to justice for those we met in the field. In order to advance climate change politics in Longyearbyen, all the economic, social and political entanglements must be taken into consideration. Silencing some voices and (re-)creating myths can hardly be seen as constructive in the painful process of moving towards ‘seeing ourselves as part of the very dynamic that visualizations of predictive climate models were describing’ (Knox 2015: 95).

While our results are place-bound and context specific, they are relevant for an understanding of how the idea of climate change is being understood, used and indeed also misused in different contexts around the world. When not given the chance to express their opinion on the matter, communities impacted by climate change are portrayed as victims in a simplified way (Farbotko & Lazrus 2012). We believe that listening carefully to local voices and local stories (Cruikshank 2005) and presenting a more complex picture of climate change impacts and perceptions is crucial for understanding and ultimately moving in the direction of fair and transparent climate change politics in the Arctic and beyond.

Acknowledgements

We thank all the people in Longyearbyen who have generously shared their stories and viewpoints with us. We would also like to thank Susanna Gartler as well as the anonymous reviewers for excellent comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. Alexandra Meyer's contribution was funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 773421 (project Nunataryuk), and by the European Research Council's advanced grant project InfraNorth (grant agreement ID: 885646). The research of Zdenka Sokolíčková was financed through the grant CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/1 8_070/0009476 (bo)REALIFE: Overheating in the high Arctic: Qualitative anthropological analysis, funded by the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic, and the University of Hradec Králové. The host institution of the project, the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, participated in the project through the mentorship of prof. Thomas Hylland Eriksen.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Steinberg et al. (2015); for a comprehensive critique of the discursive hegemony over the Arctic as an endangered place that marginalises locally lived realities, see Tam et al. (2021).