Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

‘The ice edge is lost … nature moved it’: mapping ice as state practice in the Canadian and Norwegian North

Steinberg, P.; Kristoffersen, B.

‘The ice edge is lost … nature moved it’: mapping ice as state practice in the Canadian and Norwegian North Thumbnail


Authors

B. Kristoffersen



Abstract

This paper explores how ‘ice’ is woven into the spaces and practices of the state in Norway and Canada and, specifically, how representations of the sea ice edge become political agents in that process. We focus in particular on how these states have used science to ‘map’ sea ice – both graphically and legally – over the past decades. This culminated with two maps produced in 2015, a Norwegian map that moved the Arctic sea-ice edge 70 km northward and a Canadian map that moved it 200 km southward. Using the maps and their genealogies to explore how designations of sea ice are entangled with political objectives (oil drilling in Norway, sovereignty claims in Canada), we place the maps within the more general tendency of states to assign fixed categories to portions of the earth's surface and define distinct lines between them. We propose that the production of static ontologies through cartographic representations becomes particularly problematic in an icy environment of extraordinary temporal and spatial dynamism, where complex ocean–atmospheric processes and their biogeographic impacts are reduced to lines on a map.

Citation

Steinberg, P., & Kristoffersen, B. (2017). ‘The ice edge is lost … nature moved it’: mapping ice as state practice in the Canadian and Norwegian North. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42(4), 625-641. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12184

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 20, 2017
Online Publication Date May 1, 2017
Publication Date Dec 1, 2017
Deposit Date Apr 4, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
Print ISSN 0020-2754
Electronic ISSN 1475-5661
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 42
Issue 4
Pages 625-641
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12184

Files

Accepted Journal Article (1.5 Mb)
PDF

Copyright Statement
This is the accepted version of the following article: Steinberg, P. & Kristoffersen, B. (2017). ‘The ice edge is lost … nature moved it’ mapping ice as state practice in the Canadian and Norwegian North. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42(4): 625-641, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12184. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.





You might also like



Downloadable Citations