Post Petroleum Security in Lofoten: How identity matters

• Author: Berit Kristoffersen, Brigt Dale
• Pages: 48-73

201

[start kap]

Post Petroleum Security in

Lofoten: How identity matters

Berit Kristoffersen and Brigt Dale

Berit Kristoffersen, Researcher, MA, Department of Sociology, Political Science and Social

Planning, UiT – Norway’s Arctic University, Norway. Email: berit.kristoffersen@uit.no

Brigt Dale, Senior Researcher, PhD, Northern Research Institute, Norway. Email: brigt.

dale@nforsk.no

Received March 2014, accepted May 2014

Abstract: Based on over 60 interviews and eldwork in Lofoten, Norway, over a

ve-year period (2008 – 2013), this paper argues that local identity is a ‘missing

link’ with signicant explanatory value when analyzing the contested matter of

whether to open for oil drilling in this region. rough a Giddensian approach

to ontological security, we identify a major discrepancy between local and na-

tional discourses on ‘post-petroleum security’ concerns for the Lofoten region

and its inhabitants – concerns that neither national political debates nor aca-

demic discourse have adequately included. us, we highlight time as a variable

separating local and state-centered perspectives on what sustains (ontological)

security. We show how an understanding of historically viable communities is

of core concern for the re-establishment of an identity-based security. Further,

environmental and societal risks associated with petroleum development inu-

ence the perceived balance between short-term needs for jobs, and long-term

needs for continued production of local, practice-based knowledge upon which

a specic coastal identity is built. We also discuss how Lofoten has been put on

the petroleum map as one of the last petroleum frontiers, and conclude that

Arctic Review on Law and Politics, vol. 5, 2/2014 pp. 201–226. ISSN 1891-6252

104715 GRTID Arctic Review on Law and Politics 1402.indd 201 19.09.14 12:30

berit kristoffersen and brigt dale

202

an analysis including identity as a variable can inform international debates

concerning the ‘opening’ of the circumpolar Arctic for extractive industries.1

Key words: Arctic, environmental security, ontological security, identity, petro-

leum, Lofoten, Norway

1. Introduction

e saying goes that we, that is, Norwegians, rst and foremost ‘do’ oil, that we are

‘petroleum people’. Not so here! Here, we are shers, no matter if you have been sh-

ing at sea or not. We all depend on the sea, and have always done so. at’s why we

can’t just trade sh for oil.2

e above quote is an extract from an interview with a sherman in 2009 where

co-author Brigt Dale asked a selection of more than forty locals in Lofoten – a

region positioned just above the Arctic Circle in Norway – about their concerns and

wishes concerning petroleum. e stories told during interviews would typically

begin with respondents making statements in which their position on petroleum

was explicitly revealed, statements that can roughly be categorized as belonging to

the archetypical categories of: ‘No way!’ or ‘I really don’t know’ or ‘bring it on!’ is

was oen followed by local respondents arguing for their position with reference

to their own direct connections to geographical place, to culture and to nature. In

other words: the importance of Lofoten as a place and cultural frame of reference

was in this way made explicit. e above extract from an interview in which a sense

of place is emphasized as a departure point thus exemplies the complexities in

Lofoten concerning what it means to be secure and how this is tied to local identity.

Many of the shers in the region, both young and old, said they would try to

encourage their children to avoid the sheries as a source of livelihood. eir inten-

tion was to ensure that possibilities beyond the coastal shing community they

lived in were made available to them. e attitude revealed a complex ambivalence

concerning local identity related to the embeddedness of cultural practices and

experiences over time. e sense of security connected to the hands-on, culturally

laden embodied practices of everyday shing could not hide the fact that life in a

shing village in the past was chronically insecure (and to some extent still is today).

Fishers oen died at sea, the sh could fail to appear causing despair and economic

1. e authors thank those following for reading and commenting on the manuscript: Gaute Wahl,

Rune Ytreberg, Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, Laura Junka-Aikio and Kirsti Stuvøy.

2. Interview with sherman (spring 2009) conducted by Dale.

104715 GRTID Arctic Review on Law and Politics 1402.indd 202 19.09.14 12:30