For several years, public debates about the future of the Arctic have included the growing global needs in minerals and energy resources. To explain and manage this development, it is important to understand impacts of previous extractive industries in the north. Using theoretical approaches from economic geography and science and technology studies, the aim of this article is to describe and explain the growth of mining in the Arctic and its consequences for people and environments. How and why have minerals in the Arctic been constructed as natural resources? What systems have been built to extract them, and what were their consequences? How has the legacies of mining been managed when the extraction has ceased and why? The development of mining is explained as resulting from not only economic interests, but also geopolitical considerations, institutional frameworks and cultural-ideological trends. The same drivers are involved in the making of post-extraction futures and the way people relate to the mining legacies through environmental remediation, re-purposing and heritagization.

Artikeln diskuterar kulturarvet i ljuset av den ’gröna omställning’ som svarar på EU:s mål och riktade finansiella satsningar för industriomvandlingen i norra Sverige. Det kan jämföras med den stora industriella omställningen vid 1900-talets början såväl genom att skapa nya möjligheter men också genom de målkonflikter som uppstår mellan nya och befintliga värden, både vad gäller naturförhållanden och ekonomi som kulturvärden och historiska lämningar av mänsklig verksamhet. Omställningen berör platser med en lång historia av mänskligt liv och arbete och som spelar en viktig roll för de som idag bor där och potentiellt för de som söker sig dit för att driva verksamhet eller för att bo, leva och arbeta. I många fall visar det sig svårt att ta denna potential tillvara av skäl som är strukturella, juridiska och politiska snarare än knutna till enskilda aktörer. Artikeln är författad av en multidisciplinär forskargrupp som använder ett praktikbaserat förhållningssätt och samskapande dialog för att undersöka hur förbättrade planeringsprocesser som tidigt involverar olika aktörer, intressen och expertis i förändringsprojekt kan bidra till att lösa målkonflikter och skapa möjligheter. Målkonflikter mellan exploatering och bevarandeintressen i samband med myndigheters och privata aktörers hantering av natur- och kulturmiljöer har länge varit i fokus för forskningen och artikeln syftar till att komplettera dessa perspektiv utifrån exempel som illustrerar möjligheter för att det fysiska kulturarvet ska ses som en strategisk historisk resurs i samhällsutvecklingen. En utgångspunkt är att kulturarv inte är statiskt utan värderas och omvärderas i en process där olika kulturvärden kan associeras med byggnader, platser och miljöer. Dessa kulturvärden förändras alltså över tid, och olika aktörer förhåller sig till dem på skiftande sätt. Genom processer som inbegriper förhandling med andra intressen kan landskap, platser, byggnader, föremål och deras användning förvandlas till kulturarv. Ett samskapande arbetssätt har möjliggjorts genom ett forsknings- och innovationsprojekt, finansierat av Vinnova, vilket genomförts genom en kombinerad metodansats med fallstudier, i projektet kallade lärcase, som ram för empiriska undersökningar och praktiskt genomförande. De lärcase som lyfts i denna artikel är dels Nautanen, en tidigare gruvmiljö i Norrbotten där nyetablering planeras av Boliden AB, dels Kvarnsvedens tidigare pappersbruk i Borlänge, där Northvolt etablerar en fabrik för produktion av bilbatterier vilket medfört rivning av en byggnad med konstaterade kulturhistoriska värden, den så kallade Bobergshallen. Med förslag till fortsatt forskning genom begreppsutveckling i en multidisciplinär och praktiknära kontext problematiserar artikeln begreppet cirkulär ekonomi i relation till kulturarvsfrågor och möjliggör att kulturarvet nyttjas som strategisk resurs i den gröna omställningen med förhoppning att realisera förväntningarna om grön nyindustralisering och attraktiva livsmiljöer.

Mineral resources are a considerable basis of wealth of the northern regions of Fennoscandia. However, there are striking differences between how this wealth has been distributed in different countries: in many regions of the world, plentiful natural resources have led to conflicts and impoverishment rather than local development. This chapter aims to explain the historical development of the mining industry in northern Fennoscandia and its changing institutional frameworks from a historical perspective. The main questions are: How was the mining industry in the region established, and why? How did it change over the course of this period, and why? What path dependencies linger on in the present, and how do they influence perceptions of the future? What are the differences and similarities between Sweden, Norway, Finland and northwestern Russia, and why? The chapter will cover an extensive time frame, starting in the 1600s but with a focus on 1880–present and a perspective on the future.

This chapter compares the post-extraction dynamics of two mining regions in the Fennoscandinavian Arctic: the Pite valley, Sweden, and Kolari, Finland. In 1946 the Swedish mining company Boliden closed a mine in Laver, which became a ghost town. Decades later, state authorities tried to turn Laver into a cultural heritage site. Boliden joined the effort to support its plan to re-start mining at Laver, a project that has, however, become highly controversial. The Finnish case deals with a similar controversy. Hannukainen mining company wants to re-open an iron ore mine that was in operation 1975-1990. As part of their strategy to gain acceptance for re-opening, the company and supporters of the project have mobilized the history of the mining sites and argues mining is a core element of the heritage of the Kolar municipality. Both cases have generated tension regarding the type of history and heritage of these regions: those of reindeer herding by Sámi and other local communities, or that of extractive industries? The cases show that heritage making can be useful, but it can also be a source of conflict, further underscoring the importance of the long-term view of extraction.

In this article we explore the fate of high modernist architecture and settlement planning in the North, through the lens of mining towns in Sweden and Quebec. After WW2, cities across the world were subject to a wave of restructuring in accordance with high modernist ideals. The circumpolar north became the subject of some of the most radical examples, often described as utopian. In the Swedish Arctic, a renowned architect Ralph Erskine played a leading role. He combined functionalist principles, with ideas of creating settlements protecting inhabitants from harsh Arctic conditions, in harmony with the environment. Erskine...s ideas were implemented to a different extent in Kiruna and Svappavaara in north Sweden in the 1960's and in Fermont, Quebec, in the early 1970's. Our aim is to understand the challenges of creating industrial settlements in the Arctic, with the capacity to attract employees that are needed for resource extraction and other industries. While Erskine's architecture in Svappavaara and Kiruna will be demolished, the wall shaped town in Fermont is still intact and expanding. By comparing and highlighting differences, we call attention to the threat of demolition of legacies of an era that has yet to be defined as cultural heritage.

One of the characteristics of extractive industries, in the Arctic and elsewhere, is their sensitivity to fluctuations on world markets. When demand and prices are high companies expand operations and when they fall, companies tend to close extraction sites. Moreover, no ore body lasts forever. De-industrialisation poses particular challenges to communities in the Arctic, where distances are great, alternative economies few and where the environmental and social imprints of mining often are significant. How can communities that were developed based on extraction transition to post-extraction futures? This is a key question to pose when exploring how to achieve responsible development in the Arctic. This book chapter presents research within REXSAC exploring how mining communities in the Nordic Arctic has dealt with legacies of past mining operations and under which circumstances such legacies have been ascribed new values after extraction has ended. REXSAC has dealt with this research problem in an interdisciplinary way, combining methods and approaches from humanities, social- and natural sciences. The chapter will focus on this process of research and how it has generated insights in to three main post-extraction processes: environmental remediation, heritage making and re-economization.

This chapter explores mining as a social process of continuous change into the future. Following new environmental legislation, environmental remediation and re-wilding are becoming practices of restoring landscapes altered by extraction. These are also political, social, and cultural processes involving multiple actors making choices. Remediation and re-wilding, still in an exploratory stage in the Arctic, demonstrate the entangled nature of sustainability. In order for extraction to become “sustainable” it is essential that governance has a focus on what is left when peak extraction is passed. If that is done in a hasty and irresponsible manner it will take a long time to heal “landscape scars” and other wounds that extraction has brought. The chapter focuses on the environmental remediation of two former mining sites – the Nautanen mine in Norrbotten in Sweden and the Lunckefjell mine and Sveagruvan on Svalbard – with very different contexts. At Lunckefjell, the wider framework was to safeguard Norwegian sovereignty on Svalbard. At Nautanen, remediation was limited to an attempt to make a profit from mining waste and eventually failed because of a conflict over responsibility.

In this article, we engage with environmental conflicts on indigenous land through a focus on an attempt to gain social licence to reopen and operate the Biedjovaggi mine in Guovdageainnu/Kautokeino in Sapmi, Norway. We argue that mining prospects bring forth ontological conflicts concerning land use, as well as ways to know the landscape and the envisioned future that the land holds. It is a story of a conflict between two different ways of knowing. The paper explores the Sami landscape through different concepts, practices and stories. We then contrast this to the way the same landscape is understood and narrated by a mining company, through the programmes and documents produced according to the Norwegian law and standards. We follow Ingold’s argument that the Sami landscape practices are taskscapes, where places, times and tasks are interconnected. These were not acknowledged in the plans and documents of the mining company. We conclude by addressing the tendency of extractive industries to reduce different landscapes in ways that fit with modern understandings, which oppose culture to nature.

Arctic mining towns are vulnerable to de-industrialization, as most jobs are in a single industry, with long distances to other employers or business opportunities. Other challenges are the legacies of mining that companies leave behind. Research has shown that such legacies can be used for sustaining industrial settlements beyond the end of the industries that supported them. This chapter seeks to understand under what circumstances legacies of mining can contribute to the long-term sustainability of Arctic mining towns in crisis. It explores the history of two Arctic mining towns, Kiruna in Sweden and Schefferville in Canada, and how actors there dealt with the crisis, how they used legacies from the past in this process, and what the outcomes were, after both towns were hit by economic crisis in the 1970s. By using the concepts of re-use and heritagization we show that the possibilities to sustain Arctic mining towns in crisis by creating new values out of mining legacies, depends on several factors: institutions, perceptions of values, and the momentum embedded in socio-technical systems for mining. Local initiatives for sustaining Arctic mining towns in crisis are discussed.

Understanding the impacts of extractive industries on sustainable development requires analyzing them as part of dynamic social-ecological-technological systems. Building on insights from studies of social-ecological systems and socio-technical systems, as well as fieldwork on the impacts of mining in the Nordic Arctic, this article presents an analytical framework for co-production of knowledge about the role of industrial or infrastructure projects for regional development. We use this framework to analyze Swedish mining policy, assessment guidelines, and environmental impact assessments for three mining projects in Arctic Sweden. We conclude that Swedish mining policy and guidelines for impact assessments neglect key aspects of social-ecological-technological systems, including the impacts of climate change, and treat many social aspects of sustainable development in a cursory manner. We suggest that more systematic analysis of the dynamics of social-ecological-technological systems would facilitate more transparent decision making and help identify the potential role of proposed mining projects in pathways towards sustainable development in northern regions.

This article discusses the evaluation of the management of the Laponia World Heritage site (Laponia WHS) in northern Sweden. After inscription on the World Heritage list in 1996, difficulties emerged in establishing a common understanding about the involvement of various stakeholders into the site’s management model, the key point of contention being the influence of the representatives from indigenous Sami people and how that should be organised. In 2011, the management organisation led by Laponiatjuottjudus (the Sami name for the Laponia WHS management organisation) was established and implemented. This organisation gave Sami representatives a majority in the Laponia steering board and the position as chairperson in the board. This marked a remarkable shift in the Swedish national management system of land in not only handing over a state decision-making power to the local level but also to representatives of the indigenous population. The evaluation of the management model presented by Laponiatjuottjudus resulted in a number of responses from several stakeholders participating in a consultation process. These responses, from stakeholders with conflicting positions in relation to the issue described above, are the subject of this study. The analysis of these data collected reveals the existence of four major approaches or narratives to the Laponia WHS, with narratives connected to nature, the indigenous population and local governance, the economic effects of the existing system, and lastly the local community narrative. The study concludes that present management of Laponia WHS, the Laponiatjuottjudus, is a unique attempt to widen the management and planning process that partly interferes with the existing national planning model. At the same time, the analysis reveals that the Sami demands for influence over land management in the north still faces major challenges connected to its colonial legacy.