Ida Højlund Rasmussen

• Rasmussen, Ida Højlund (2023). Multispecies stories of Vardø: an Arctic place in change. Landscape Research. ISSN 0142-6397. doi: 10.1080/01426397.2023.2248019. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  ABSTRACT The speed of climate change calls our attention towards the life forms on this warming Earth – human and beyond. In this article, I aim to contribute to the conversation about how we co-exist by presenting multispecies ‘compost stories’ of the Norwegian town Vardø, which seems to be well underway in a post-Arctic shift. Vardø has received much attention over the past decade from researchers and artists. However, efforts to describe this socially and historically dynamic place are often concentrated on the built heritage and primarily human history. With a newly built community greenhouse as my point of departure, I unfold various multispecies stories connected to the concepts of demarcation, domestication, change and acceleration that I encountered during a summer in Vardø. Curious about the hidden stories of Vardø, I ask how to remain loyal to a place’s history while incorporating new stories that just keep accelerating in their relevance.

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• Rasmussen, Ida Højlund (2026). Working and Writing with Dyrk Varanger – Experiences from Collaborative Research in the Norwegian High North. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  How can researchers meaningfully collaborate with northern communities? This question is central to my research in Várggát/Vuorea/Vardø—a small island community on the Várnjárga/Varenkinniemi/Varanger Peninsula in Finnmárku/Finmarkku/Finnmark. Increased geopolitical interest, coupled with environmental and climatic destabilization in northern regions, calls for stronger bonds between academics and non-academics. Focusing on DyrkVaranger/GrowVaranger—a group of dedicated people who built a community greenhouse and grow organic vegetables in Vardø—one of my main concerns is how to avoid extractive practices in knowledge production. In a context marked by a colonial past, what ethical considerations arise when researchers involve themselves and aim to do so in a decolonial way, and what does it mean to make research matter locally given the diversity of northern contexts? Opposing “one-size-fits-all” approaches, I share situated experiences of working and writing with DyrkVaranger, illustrated by a permaculture workshop and a co-authoring process.

• Rasmussen, Ida Højlund (2023). Global Urbanism: Lviv. Studio og samarbejde med Kharkiv School of Architecture (KhSA). Full text in Research Archive
• Rasmussen, Ida Højlund (2023). VARDØ: Varige værdier, forvaltning og fællesskab. Full text in Research Archive
• Rasmussen, Ida Højlund (2023). Composting in the (post)Arctic. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Can a pile of horse manure and a bag of food waste be valuable resources? When does something actually “become a resource”? This, I have asked myself when dealing with soil construction and future small-scale farming in Vardø, a community in the Norwegian high north. Here, there is a growing wish for vegetable farming – both on grassroot and municipal levels. To support the Vardø community in their quest for locally produced vegetables, I direct my attention towards the “waste” of the island, the relation between municipal land-use objectives and existing small-scale initiatives dealing with composting. In north-eastern Varanger, food waste is not managed locally but transported either 250 km. to Båtsfjord or 840 km. to Boden, northern Sweden. This might imply a possibility for implementing more circular waste management strategies in Vardø. Managing waste locally might, however, intervene with questions of productivity, profit and private property rights. But what happens if soils are seen as working (Krzywoszynska, 2020) and understood as part of a (post)Arctic resource network, along with seaweed, human labour, food waste, Hügel beds, and other biological agents? Drawing on field work conducted last summer, and thinking with STS and multispecies studies scholars who consider soils as living and ask whether it is possible to envision possibility while still recognising catastrophe, I ask whether the ontology of soil as a resource may be shifting, and how this relates to a local community with a scarcity of soil, but plenty of willpower. Can rethinking waste management and approaches to soil form more fertile human-soil relations in a place, that one from a southern perspective could consider a “temperature periphery”?

• Rasmussen, Ida Højlund (2023). Human-soil relations in the Norwegian high north. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  What characterizes human-soil relations in a place, where soil is a limited resource? This is central to my research on landscapes and resource management in Vardø, a town situated in the Norwegian Arctic. While temperatures are rising, locals in Vardø have built a greenhouse with the aim of nurturing both plants and community. Healthy growing needs healthy soil, and soil is a scarcity in this region. But what if the people of Vardø could build their own soil? In September, I will conduct a collaborative soil-building workshop in Vardø, where we will investigate how seaweed, horse manure, driftwood, food waste, and other local resources can enter a Hügelkultur bed (an old German cultivation technique) and eventually become soil. Building soil is a somewhat “introverted” process that happens within matter, which can be difficult for the human eye to comprehend. However, staying curious and directing attention towards the work of microbes might help strengthen human-soil relations in an almost soilless place – and provide the Vardø community with fresh and nutritious soil. In this paper I will present my findings from the soil-building workshop followed by a critical discussion on how to approach Arctic human-soil relations in the wake of climate change.

• Nilsen, Torbjørn Tumyr & Rasmussen, Ida Højlund (2023). AHO med Ukraina-samarbeid. [Journal]. Arkitektur.no. Full text in Research Archive
• Rasmussen, Ida Højlund (2022). Making sense of a place in change. Full text in Research Archive
• Rasmussen, Ida Højlund (2022). VARDØ: Bearing witness to a place in change. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  EVERYTHING IS A STORY is written in white, sans serif letters on an old barn in Vardø, a town situated in eastern Finnmark above the 70th parallel north and only connected to mainland by an undersea tunnel. I spent the summer there, and I found myself thinking quite a lot about how stories can produce established truths. Due to its cold climate, Vardø supposedly only has a single tree. This is, however, ‘a well-known falsehood’ as the local newspaper, Østhavet, wrote ahead of a tree-height-measurement competition. Another fact often referred to is that Vardø is the only Norwegian town within the climatic Arctic zone understood as the average temperature in July being 10°C or less. Being “climatic Arctic” is part of the town’s identity. But the climate is changing. In 2020 and 2021 the average temperature in July wasabove 10°C and this year it reached 11,9°C, according to data from the Norwegian Centre for Climate Services. And the change is visible in Vardø; kittiwakes are migrating to urban areas, the crowberry heather is expanding, and locals are building a greenhouse to grow vegetables in the future. Vardø may have lost its status as the only Norwegian town within the Arctic climatic zone, but perhaps it is the first Norwegian post-Arctic place? And if so, what does this entail? Drawing on multispecies studies and ethnographic methods of noticing, I will reflect on how to witness a place in change during one of the warmest summers ever recorded in Vardø.

• Rasmussen, Ida Højlund (2022). VARDØ: Varige værdier, forvaltning & fællesskab. Full text in Research Archive
• Rasmussen, Ida Højlund (2022). Field work experiences from Finnmark. Full text in Research Archive

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