I’ve been to the Arctic a few times in winter, but not by far as often as I’ve been there in summer. Arctic winters can be terribly dark but also very magical.

This winter I joined the Emerging Leaders programme of Arctic Frontiers, to learn more about life, politics, science, business and indigenous perspectives in the Arctic. We travelled through Northern Norway and attended conferences, and I extended the whole adventure by heading up to Svalbard afterwards to give a guest lecture and work on projects over there. It was a tough and full program, but also something that I like to call “purpose stacking”. We have to be careful with the environmental impact of our travels, so combining many positive purposes within the same trip is a good idea. Better than heading back and forth all the time. Sadly many activities that I had planned on Svalbard got undermined by heavy storms and illness. This is also life in the Arctic. Getting places is difficult and costly, and even then we’re still left with our own little human vulnerability amid storms and other natural superpowers.

I leave with more questions than answers. Wondering how my romantic ecologist brain fits within an arena of Arctic geopolitics and an environment under increasing pressure. Wondering where my fascination with the Arctic leaves the scientific realm and becomes a purely personal, maybe almost selfish addiction. Pretty soon already, I think.. Wondering how this majestic and remote place has so quickly turned into a stage for capitalist expansion of human activities and resource extraction. I owe you the answers. But my heart felt that it was in the right place when northern lights lit up the skies above small fisherman’s towns, when the first sun rays hit a frozen fjord after a long winter, and when our snowmobiles took us into wide, frozen, twilight valleys. I hope I will continue to find a place here.