Ingrid A. Medby. Arctic State Identity: Geography, History, and Geopolitical Relations. Manchester: Manchester University Press, January 2025.
On 19 September 1996, eight government representatives signed as the “Arctic States” what was to become known as the Ottawa Declaration, establishing the Arctic Council and their membership in this exclusive group. Three decades later, the titles as Arctic states are as important as ever—but what does it really mean? Or more specifically, what does it mean to represent an Arctic state, and how does it connect to ideas of a country’s identity?
These are the questions that Arctic State Identity: Geography, History, and Geopolitical Relations centre on. Focusing specifically on three of the eight Arctic states—Norway, Iceland, and Canada—it explores both shared and contrasting understandings of each country’s identity as an Arctic state. And it asks state representatives and personnel how they view their own state and its identity as Arctic—in other words, specifically an identity of the state as an institution, structure, and territory, rather than a sense of national identity.
It quickly becomes clear in the book, that there is no singular Arctic state identity. There are instead many interweaving stories and reflections of state personnels’ own roles, their countries, and their relations with the wider international community.
It quickly becomes clear in the book, that there is no singular Arctic state identity. There are instead many interweaving stories and reflections of state personnels’ own roles, their countries, and their relations with the wider international community. However, what is common across state identities is a spatiotemporal frame: an anchoring of identity narratives in ideas of both geographies and histories. The former might relate to territories and borders, but also climates, environments, cold, and ice; and the latter might be about famous explorers and colonisers, but also about childhood memories, familial ties, and ideas about the future. The Arctic is, after all, a space often defined in the South by future anticipation—whether that is of a coming opportunity or conflict. And for those from the North themselves, an Arctic state identity might mean something very different, connecting to both dear and troubling memories of the self and the state.
Within this frame of space and time, the Arctic state is also understood in this book through relations at multiple scales. Although, in reality, these scales overlap and interweave, they can be described as identities vis-à-vis contextual Others. In other words, a state identity is deeply relational—at the level of the international, national, intra-national, and even personal. At this final level, it becomes clear how also state personnel come to see their own role within a state, and within a nation, that is formally titled Arctic—and how that connects with personal and professional senses of the self. Their reflections tell us that far from being a unitary actor in and of itself, the Arctic state is made up of a myriad of people, experiences, and emotions.
Drawing on the insights and rich reflections from these three countries, the book sheds light on how identity narratives not only get instrumentalised in policies and strategies, but also—arguably, more interestingly—how they may inform political practice, and how they are understood by those tasked with representing the state in the day-to-day. At a time when the Arctic is changing rapidly, climatically as well as geopolitically, it is more important than ever to consider how and why decisions are made and all of our relationships with the region, at whichever scale or in whichever position. And beyond the Arctic region too, the book contributes to efforts of enriching our understandings of the state, political practices, and the people of international relations.
Feature Image: “Canadian Arctic Island and Glacier” by treasuresthouhast is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Ingrid Medby