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Arctic branding

Interview with Gunnar Sander, Polar Institute, Tromsø
 

It’s branding. The world’s interest in the Arctic has increased, so everybody wants to brand themselves as “arctic”.
–But the interest has raised not only for good reasons, so I mean it’s a bit strange the phenomenon…
–It is, and you can speculate about the interplay this creates in people’s identities, because it means that quite a lot of people are starting to think at themselves as somehow related to the Arctic.
–Maybe this could also be a way that they can relate to the issues that are connected to the Arctic, and in this way it’s not only branding, it could be a more positive…?
–Surely. You sit now in the very building where the Arctic Housing Secretariat is located. So Tromsø in a way is a kind of capital for Arctic politics if you like. Which of course has a lot of implications for how people think about the region. […] An understanding of the Arctic as a region, that’s one of the major achievements and changes that happened after the Cold War. So the Arctic Council, or first the Arctic environmental protection strategy have been very influencial in that.