Re-centering Svalbard's Heritage: The International Materiality of Norway's High Arctic Archipelago

On maps and in popular imagination, Svalbard – if it even appears – is often placed as a distant Norwegian periphery which is now increasingly used as a backdrop to the headlines about geopolitical insecurities and catastrophic climate breakdown. These stories, however, told from afar, obscure the immediate, on-the-ground material realities of Svalbard. The purpose of this presentation is to illustrate some of the alternative stories that emerge through the examination of the deeply international archaeological record found on Svalbard that is now stored at the Svalbard Museum and found all around the archipelago. Using this material, the picture of Svalbard which emerges is one of a High Arctic crossroads - a highly interconnected place where people from different nations and ethnicities interacted for over 400 years. While these stories may not necessarily solve climate change or warm geopolitical relations, the international material from Svalbard can help us understand the current state of the Arctic and the world in its present moment.