From mining tool to tourist attraction: Cultural heritage as a materialised form of transformation in Svalbard society

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Kotašková, Eva
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2022
• Subjects: Svalbard; Polar Record
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247422000092; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247422000092

Abstract In the context of socio-economic transformation of Svalbard, from a place dominated by the coal mining industry to a nature-based tourism destination, the article focuses on how this transformation is co-created with material objects of coal mining remnants. These seemingly marginal, insignificant or even out-of-place remnants of coal mining activity (such as rusty barrels or collapsing infrastructure) have become, by law, a protected part of the Svalbard environment, a cultural heritage. Based on the relational (more-than-human) ethnography of guided tours, the analysis shows that this transformation is co-creating the characteristics of both the past of coal mining and the present notion of wilderness. It demonstrates the process not only as a transformation of interpretations, knowledge and values but also as a transformation of relations with non-human components of the environment. Rather contextual than linear shifts in a biography of the objects, together with the temporality of the objects and their porous character, play a significant role in the Svalbard’s transformation into a nature-based tourism destination.