City under the Ice:The Closed World of Camp Century

• Main Author: Nielsen, Kristian Hvidtfelt
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: Arctic; Greenland; Thule Air Base; Thule Air; Thule
• Online Access: https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/publications/city-under-the-ice(2aec1b0e-6016-4b15-9b9f-e6369945917b).html; http://www.hssonline.org/Meeting/2011HSSMeeting/Program%20Abstracts.pdf

This paper uses Paul Edwards’ closed world metaphor to understand US involvement in Greenland during the Cold War. Closed worlds mark military-techno-scientific geographies of conflict: They refer to sealed techno-spaces of observation, containment, and control, but also to the settings in which military conflicts are taking place. Studying the wealth of public representations of Camp Century, established 1959-60 by the US Army 128 miles east of the Thule Air Base and often referred to as the “City under the Ice”, we find a sharp contrast between the domesticated interior and the superpower conflict that gave impetus to the camp’s construction. Presented to the public as a scientific station and a technologically-advanced, under-ice extension of the American way of life, while situated in the titanic struggle between West and East, Camp Century took on a number of closed-world meanings: The public image of Camp Century was one of technological comfort and military-scientific control. Amidst the raging Cold War and up against the harsh environment, the construction of the camp would prove to the public that the combined forces of the US military-technology-science complex would prevail. However, the military logic of Camp Century was self-referential and closed in the sense that the very idea of constructing the city under ice emerged from Cold War strategy. The closed world of Camp Century established a temporary boundary between, on the one hand, the comfortable space controlled by US ideology and, on the other, the bleak environments defined by Arctic climate and the Cold War.