The four articles in this issue of Acta Borealia have all been written within the three-year international research project Arctic Modernities at UiT The Arctic University of Norway (UiT). Completed in July 2016, the project was financed by the Polar Research Programme of the Research Council of Norway, with additional funding from the Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education at UiT. Twenty researchers, from seven countries and several disciplines, were involved. We have investigated the impact of modernization and modernity on the Arctic as a cultural formation from a variety of perspectives – literary, visual and cultural – across the humanities. At the same time, we have explored how traditional Arctic images – whether these are affirmed, contested or repudiated – have shaped, influenced and informed modern discourses of the Arctic. The Arctic Modernities project has examined instances of Arctic modernity in different media and at different historical periods. Consequently, the conclusions reached by the project members also vary considerably. As a whole, though, they confirm one of our main assumptions at the outset, namely that the modern Arctic has a double discursive signification. On the one hand, at least for those who live and work there, it is accessible, everyday and even prosaic; on the other, it is still conceptualized a never-never land of romance and adventure. A typical example of the latter is found in Sidonie Smith’s recent study of twentieth-century travel writing by women, Moving Lives (2001), where the Arctic is described as “the constitutive outside of modernity”, one of “the vast ‘premodern’ spaces, uninhabited by urbanized peoples. They are spaces far distant from overcrowded metropolitan centers, spaces as yet unmarked by the rampant and rampaging signs of progress” (Smith 2001, 31). One of the problems with this stereotype, of course, is that Smith elides or is unaware of local differences that the transnational circumpolar area is made up of. Moreover, it can be argued that the Arctic has never been outside either history or modernity. The implication of the Arctic in the processes of modernity has just become more obvious to the world at large with the melting of the polar icecap. Sometimes, as Peter Stadius’ contribution to this issue of Acta Borealia indicates, the Arctic has even been used as an image of modernity itself. Susi Frank, for example, has shown how the Arctic in Soviet writing of the 1930s is promoted as an exemplary region where technological innovations, social warmth and imagination will eradicate the hardships of remoteness and a cold climate (Frank 2010). Related utopian images are also found in representations of the Nordic North as exemplary of progressive

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介绍

本期 Acta Borealia 的四篇文章均在挪威北极大学 (UiT) 的 UiT 为期三年的国际研究项目北极现代性中撰写。该项目于 2016 年 7 月完成，由挪威研究委员会的极地研究计划资助，并由 UiT 人文、社会科学和教育学院提供额外资金。来自七个国家和多个学科的二十名研究人员参与其中。我们从人文学科的文学、视觉和文化等多种角度研究了现代化和现代性作为一种文化形态对北极的影响。与此同时，我们探索了传统的北极图像——无论是肯定的、有争议的还是否定的——是如何塑造、影响和影响现代北极话语的。北极现代性项目研究了不同媒体和不同历史时期的北极现代性实例。因此，项目成员得出的结论也有很大差异。不过，总的来说，它们一开始就证实了我们的一个主要假设，即现代北极具有双重话语意义。一方面，至少对于在那里生活和工作的人来说，它是可以访问的，每天甚至是平淡无奇的；另一方面，它仍然被概念化为一个从未有过的浪漫和冒险之地。后者的典型例子见于 Sidonie Smith 最近对 20 世纪女性旅行写作的研究，Moving Lives (2001)，其中北极被描述为“现代性之外的构成”，是“广阔的‘前现代’之一”。城市化人口无人居住的空间。它们是远离过度拥挤的大都市中心的空间，这些空间尚未被猖獗和肆虐的进步迹象所标记”（Smith 2001, 31）。当然，这种刻板印象的问题之一是，史密斯忽略或不知道构成跨国极地地区的地方差异。此外，可以说北极从未脱离历史或现代。随着极地冰盖的融化，北极在现代性进程中的意义对整个世界变得更加明显。有时，正如彼得·斯塔迪乌斯对本期《北极报》的贡献所表明的那样，北极甚至被用作现代性本身的形象。例如，苏西·弗兰克 (Susi Frank) 展示了 1930 年代苏联写作中的北极如何被宣传为技术创新、社会温暖和想象力将消除偏远和寒冷气候的困难（Frank 2010）。在北欧北部的表现中也发现了相关的乌托邦形象，作为进步的典范