Framing the Arctic: Reconsidering Roald Amundsen's Gjøa Expedition Imagery

Published version available at http://dx.doi.org/10.7557/13.3431In 1906 Roald Amundsen’s Gjøa Expedition returned to Norway after three years in the Arctic. The first to complete a Northwest Passage by sea, the expedition also brought back a substantial amount of ethnographic material concerning the Netsilik Inuit, with whom Amundsen and his crew had been in sustained contact during their stay on King William Island in Nunavut between 1903 and 1905. This material included a large number of photographs, forty-two of which were included as illustrations in his expedition narrative, titled Nordvest-passagen and first released in Norwegian in 1907. Focusing on a selection of published and unpublished photographs from Amundsen’s voyage and their interrelationships, this article examines the degree to which the Gjøa Expedition’s use of photography formed part of a planned project that intersected with anthropological concerns and practices of its time. My purpose is further to demonstrate that there is a discernible change in the representation of indigeneity that occurs when particular photographs were selected and then contextually reframed as illustrations in Nordvest-passagen. On the one hand, the extensive body of photographs taken in the field elaborates the close interaction between crew and Inuit recorded in Amundsen’s personal diary and published narrative, testifying to the existence of an active and dynamic contact zone. In this regard, the original photographs could arguably be read as a dialogic portrayal of the unique individuals Amundsen’s crew met while in the Arctic. On the other hand, a peculiar distancing seems to have taken place as the Gjøa Expedition’s photographs were selected and reproduced as illustrations for Amundsen’s expedition narrative. Likely connected to a desire to match his expedition narrative to existing scientific visual and literary conventions, this shift suggests Amundsen’s attempts through textual and visual means to deny the Netsilik Inuit’s coevalness

Reproducing the Indigenous: John Møller’s Studio Portraits of Greenlanders in Context

Manuscript. Published version available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08003831.2016.1238175 Between 1889 and 1922, John Møller (1867–1935), the first professional Greenlandic photographer, produced more than 3000 glass plate negatives documenting life in Western Greenland around the turn of the twentieth century. Rooted in an internal understanding of self, Møller’s photographs played an important part in the formation of a contemporary image of Greenlandic indigenous identity. At the same time, Møller’s photographic practice was arguably entangled in and delimited by a historical reality that was structured by colonial relations of power. This paper examines the social and art- historical contexts of Møller’s work, focusing in particular on a selection of his formal studio portraits. My reading of these portraits suggests a case in which conflicting impulses coincide. On the one hand, Møller produced images that played out the “ethnographic convention”, a European form of representation dating back to the sixteenth century used for the documentation of non-Western indigenous peoples as specimens. However, in acting out that convention, Møller’s photographs hint at a subtle, progressive building-up of identity that reclaimed images of Greenlanders for themselves, and turned an originally negative, external image of indigeneity into a positive sense of self

Arctic exploration and the mobility of phrenology: John Ross's ethnographic portraits of the Netsilingmiut

Analysing a set of ethnographic images and illustrations resulting from John Ross’s second voyage to find a Northwest Passage in 1829–1833, this article considers the ways in which Arctic exploration intersected with emergent scientific thinking about race and ethnicity in Britain. In particular, it examines how mobility impacted ideas of phrenology and scientific imaging in the context of the Arctic. As a practitioner of phrenology and member of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, Ross’s expertise in this new mental science certainly travelled with him to the Arctic. As his field drawings and book illustrations testify, however, Ross’s knowledge was also affected by his immediate contact with the Inuit in Boothia Peninsula in Nunavut. Comparing Ross’s field drawings and illustrations in his twovolume Narrative and Appendix to their accompanying texts and to select ethnographic illustrations produced by his fellow Arctic explorers, this article uncovers the material and conceptual transformations Ross’s scientific visualisation of Inuit underwent during his physical movement between Britain and the Arctic

Traces of an Arctic Voice: The Portrait of Qalaherriaq

This article analyses the portrait of the young Inughuit hunter Qalaherriaq, who was brought involuntarily to England from his home in Perlernerit (Cape York) in today's Kalaallit Nunaat (also known as Greenland) with Captain Erasmus Ommanney’s expedition vessel in 1851. The portrait’s highly unconventional representation, wherein the sitter is shown both en face and in profile, betrays an interest in nineteenth-century racial science and civilizing ideologies. Despite this problematic colonialist content, the double portrait serves as a record for the existence and experience of Qalaherriaq and the participation of Inuit individuals in European expeditions to the Arctic. As this article argues, the portrait is also a visual testimony to Qalaherriaq’s agency, adaptability, and deliberate performance in a social environment characterized by ethnocentrism and racism. Bringing in the trail of Inughuit and European sources that this portrait connects to, this article traces the nature and terms of Qalaherriaq’s stay in British society. As a decolonizing strategy, we use the method of concurrences to avoid universalizing perspectives on the past. Examining moments of competing truth claims in the European and Arctic sources about or relating to Qalaherriaq, we point to the competing perspectives on the Arctic, exploration, and British imperialism contained in this material

Heroism and Imperialism in the Arctic: Edwin Landseer’s Man Proposes – God Disposes

Edwin Landseer contributed the painting Man Proposes - God Disposes (Royal Holloway College, Egham), showing two polar bears amongst the remnants of a failed Arctic expedition, to the Royal Academy's annual exhibition of 1864. As contemporary nineteenth-century reviews of this exhibition show, the British public commonly associated Landseer's painting with the lost Arctic expedition of sir John Franklin, who had set out to find the Northwest Passage in 1845. Despite Landseer's gloomy representation of a present-day human disaster and, in effect, of British exploration in the Arctic, the painting became a public success upon its first showing. I will argue that a major reason why the painting became a success, was because Landseer's version of the Franklin expedition's fate offered a closure to the whole Franklin tragedy that corresponded to British nineteenth-century views on heroism and British-ness

Arctic Images 1818-1859

This thesis asks whether there existed a unified view of the Arctic during the time period connected to the high point of British endeavour to find a Northwest Passage, from the first expeditions of the nineteenth-century in 1818 to the return of the last Franklin search party in 1859, forty-one years later. Using this time frame as its marker, the focus of the thesis is primarily on British representations of Arctic landscapes, exploration and Inuit peoples. Through careful empirical analysis of a variety of media, including professional painting, on-the-spot sketches, prints and popular exhibitions, it examines from an art historical viewpoint the historical, political, social and aesthetic contexts in which Arctic representations occurred

Elektronisk studentvurdering i praksisstudier. Fremmer det kvalitet og effektivitet?

Introduksjon: Praksisstudier utgjør fra 30–50 % av læringsaktivitetene i bachelorstudier innen helse- og sosialfagene. Praksisfeltet og utdanningsinstitusjonen har felles ansvar for å samarbeid om tilrettelegging av et læringsmiljø for studentene som gir mulighet for å oppnå læringsutbyttene. Både helsesektoren og universitets- og høgskolesektoren på nasjonalt nivå etterspør tekniske løsninger for å øke relevans, kvalitet og effektivitet i samhandlingen mellom partene i forbindelse med praksisstudier. Hensikt: Å styrke kvalitet og effektivitet i vurderingen av sykepleiestudenter i praksisstudier. Metode: Inspirert av aksjonsforskning, med reelt gjensidig samarbeid mellom helseinstitusjonene og utdanningsinstitusjonene. Utvalget var studenter, veiledere og kontaktlærere ved seks sykehusavdelinger. Elektronisk studentvurdering (ESV) ble utviklet og prøvd ut gjennom fire praksisperioder i spesialisthelsetjenesten. Resultater: ESV kan gi økt kontinuitet i studentveiledningen, skape større grad av felles forståelse for vurderingsgrunnlaget og tilrettelegge for hensiktsmessig tidsbruk i forbindelse med praksisstudier. Stort potensiale for kvalitetsutvikling av praksisstudier ligger i muligheten ESV gir for kontaktlærers regelmessige oppfølging av student og veileder. Konklusjon: For å utnytte ESVs potensiale fullt ut er lederforankring i både utdanningsinstitusjonen og praksisarenaen viktig for å sikre engasjerte og aktive studenter, veiledere og kontaktlærere. Mulighetene er store for å videreutvikle ESV for bruk i kommunehelsetjenesten og for andre profesjonsutdanninger med praksisstudier i sitt program. Nøkkelord: elektronisk verktøy, praksisstudier, vurdering, sykepleiestudentpublishedVersio

Framing the Arctic: Reconsidering Roald Amundsen’s Gjøa Expedition Imagery

In 1906 Roald Amundsen’s Gjøa Expedition returned to Norway after three years in the Arctic. The first to complete a Northwest Passage by sea, the expedition also brought back a substantial amount of ethnographic material concerning the Netsilik Inuit, with whom Amundsen and his crew had been in sustained contact during their stay on King William Island in Nunavut between 1903 and 1905. This material included a large number of photographs, forty-two of which were included as illustrations in his expedition narrative, titled Nordvest-passagen and first released in Norwegian in 1907. Focusing on a selection of published and unpublished photographs from Amundsen’s voyage and their interrelationships, this article examines the degree to which the Gjøa Expedition’s use of photography formed part of a planned project that intersected with anthropological concerns and practices of its time. My purpose is further to demonstrate that there is a discernible change in the representation of indigeneity that occurs when particular photographs were selected and then contextually reframed as illustrations in Nordvest-passagen. On the one hand, the extensive body of photographs taken in the field elaborates the close interaction between crew and Inuit recorded in Amundsen’s personal diary and published narrative, testifying to the existence of an active and dynamic contact zone. In this regard, the original photographs could arguably be read as a dialogic portrayal of the unique individuals Amundsen’s crew met while in the Arctic. On the other hand, a peculiar distancing seems to have taken place as the Gjøa Expedition’s photographs were selected and reproduced as illustrations for Amundsen’s expedition narrative. Likely connected to a desire to match his expedition narrative to existing scientific visual and literary conventions, this shift suggests Amundsen’s attempts through textual and visual means to deny the Netsilik Inuit’s coevalness

Outsider Art? Herleik Kristiansens kunstneriske prosesser

Denne artikkelen utfordrer anvendeligheten av konseptet Outsider Art gjennom en analyse av Herleik Kristiansens kunstneriske prosesser. Kristiansen er psykisk utviklingshemmet, og i perioden 1963–93 var han beboer ved institusjonen Trastad Gård. Prosessene som diskuteres er: Kristiansens utvikling som kunstner, hans særegne måte å skape kunst på og til sist transformasjonen av natur til kultur i verkene hans, der vi presenterer en alternativ fenomenologisk lesning av Fugler i snøstorm

Humanity on the move in the era of Enlightenment and colonisation

In modern times, since commerce is so much extended, that people in very distant parts of the world, have an almost constant communication with one another, we have much better access to know the different circumstances which can affect men in different situations … [and] has produced a very considerable effect in enlarging our ideas on this subject