28 november: Lecture Frigga Kruse

In this talk, Frigga Kruse presents the current state of her PhD thesis on British mining, exploration, and geopolitics on Spitsbergen (present-day Svalbard) between the years 1904 and 1953. Frigga is an industrial archaeologist and will look at the perhaps unexpected joys of archival research in Great Britain and Norway before addressing two fieldwork seasons on the Arctic archipelago itself. The historical documents and the results of the archaeological surveys complement each other. Pencil sketches, photographs, shoe soles, and tent pegs tell the little-known story of British involvement in the Spitsbergen coal rush. They bring to light the strategies of four mining companies as they strove to gain financial and political support at home and struggled to work coal and other natural resources up north. This human story is relevant not only as an instructive example of how people formerly endeavoured to exploit the poles and other peripheries; it finds parallels in today’s international competition for oil and gas beneath the Arctic Ocean.