Events 2019

An essay on the “Imagined North” co-published by the Arctic Arts Summit in 14 languages

The Arctic Arts Summit, in cooperation with the Research Chair on Images of the North, Winter and the Arctic at the Université du Québec à Montréal, announces the co-publication in 14 languages of an essay by Daniel Chartier, What is the Imagined North? Ethical Principles. This essay was presented as the opening keynote of the first Arctic Arts Summit in Harstad (Norway) in June 2017.

The book is published in 14 different editions, in Norwegian, Northern Sami, English, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, French, Russian, Japanese, Faroese, Yakut, and Inuktitut. Estonian and Icelandic editions will be published later in 2019.

Each of the 14 editions is multilingual, with a different set of 7 languages: according the author, Daniel Chartier, “After meeting with Maria Utsi, director of the first Summit, we decided it was important to send a clear message about the necessity of plurilinguism to understand the Arctic. Both of us coming from linguistically endangered cultures — in Sapmí and in Québec — we agreed on the need to highlight the richness of circumpolar languages, including Indigenous languages”.

Thanks to the help of many individual and institutions, the editions cover a large number of languages and are intended to showcase the linguistic diversity of the Arctic. The project remains open to new collaborations in order to add other languages.

The short essay of about twenty pages explores the definition of the “imagined North” while defending a better recognition of all the cultures of the Arctic. “The book is a way to recomplexify the North and the Arctic to reflect the richness and diversity of the circumpolar world”, says the professor. “The North is more than a resource. There is a real, and fragile, cultural diversity in the Arctic.”

Printed copies of the book will be offered to the participants of the 2nd Arctic Arts Summit in Rovaniemi (Finland) in June 2019.