The journey as a transcultural experience for international students

An international two-year Erasmus Mundus MA, Transcultural European Outdoor Studies (TEOS), uses the journey as a central metaphorical concept, the “peregrinatio academica”, and experiential pedagogy. Students study human nature interactions through the lens of outdoor education and recreation while travelling for a semester at a time in three European countries: England, Norway and Germany. We argue that the transcultural concept is facilitated by the diverse nationalities of the student cohort and the concept and experience of the journey. Empirical evidence from student feedback, course discussions, and staff reflections is used to explore the ways in which the programme elucidates ideas of expert and Eurocentric knowledge of landscape and learning by valuing individual knowledge constructions and new research. Simultaneously, we argue that the typical European “gaze” on the “other” somehow is reversed as “others” gaze at European cultures, and, to some degree, contribute to destabilizing culturally taken-for-granted knowledge. This offers new opportunities for a more nuanced transcultural exploration of human nature interactions in diverse landscapes and cultures. We conclude that the knowledge and skills developed by this programme supports the development of “transculturalized” students with the enhanced capacity to shift between and discuss diverse positions and ways of viewing and knowing.     

Urban Sámi Identities in Scandinavia: Hybridities,Ambivalences and Cultural Innovation

One of the most significant social and cultural changes in the northern part of Scandinavia, as in other parts of the world, is urbanization. All over the northern region, towns and cities are growing, and a large portion of the indigenous population now lives in urban areas throughout all Scandinavian countries. Within these multicultural cities, urban Sámi communities are emerging and making claims to the cities. From a situation where migration from a Sámi core area to a city was associated with assimilation, an urban Sámi identity is now in the making. In this article, we discuss what seems to be the emergence of an urban Sámi culture. The article builds on findings from a study of urban Sámi and their expression of identity in three cities with the largest and fastest-growing Sámi populations in the region: Tromsø (Norway), Umeå (Sweden) and Rovaniemi (Finland). A main finding is the increasing recognition of their status as indigenous people and the growth in Sámi institutions in the cities. Another finding is an urban Sámi culture in the making, where new expressions of Sámi identity are given room to grow, but where we also find ambivalences and strong links and identifications to places in the Sámi core districts outside of the cities.     

Past,present, and future: the role of the Cold War in legitimising Danish foreign policy activism

The Cold War has had an extended life span in Danish foreign policy due to the establishment of a right-wing revisionist agenda. This article argues that this revisionism came to serve different contemporary purposes under the Anders Fogh Rasmussen governments. Externally it was used to legitimise the Danish participation in the Iraq War and came to serve as a tool to discipline the war-sceptical social democratic led opposition and secured parliamentary support for an offensive Liberal-inspired activism in Danish foreign policy. Domestically the revisionism became entangled with the overall cultural war that the Liberal-led government launched and thereby became a part of the overall ideological war that united the governing coalition from 2001 to 2011.