I was recently in a conversation with my mom where she mentioned how a lot of her friends and relatives in the USA have been sharing on Facebook just absolute nonsense about Norway: videos and posts with exaggerated if not flat-out incorrect facts about the country, and more notably, “AI-generated” pictures of fairy tale-esque natural scenes. Mom said how she pointed out to one of her relatives who shared such a “photo”, how it was made up, and that relative got a bit irate about my mom’s comment and said, “Who cares if it’s AI?! It’s a nice picture!” — even though that relative seemed to fully believe it was a real photo right until mom pointed out it wasn’t, and left no indication that it was not a real photo.
…So that’s a bit concerning, “post-truth” as they say.
Relaying this anecdote to me, mom remarked, “I mean, seriously, what if someone came to Norway hoping to see these crazy flowers and natural phenomena and stuff? The locals would be like, ‘What the heck are you talking about? That doesn’t exist.’ — So how can someone share misinformation like that, and just not care simply because it’s a ‘nice picture’? It’s bizarre.” — And I said that someone coming to Norway because of “AI-generated” pictures would be like the modern-day version of Gregor MacGregor’s Poyais scheme.
Anyways, after relaying this anecdote to me, mom then remarked something to the effect of that it’s as if her friends and relatives in the USA think of Norway as this magical mystical fairy tale country, and will cling to anything that lets them keep that conception, no matter how ridiculous it is, and will get upset if you try to poke holes in their “mythologizing”. And I said, “That’s called borealism, isn’t it?” — and she hadn’t heard that term, so I read the Wikipedia article to give her a basic idea of it.
Borealism is a form of exoticism in which stereotypes are imposed on the Earth’s northern regions and cultures (particularly the Nordic and Arctic regions).
The term was inspired by the similar concept of Orientalism, first coined by Edward Said. An early form of Borealism can be identified in antiquity, especially Roman writings; but, like Orientalism, Borealism came to flourish in eighteenth-century European Romanticism and Romantics’ fantasies about distant regions. Borealism can include the paradoxical ideas that the North is uniquely savage, inhospitable, or barbaric, and that it is uniquely sublime, pure, or enlightened.
A further form of borealism is the explicit invocation of the boreal by white-supremacist far-right politicians.
The Wikipedia article neglects to mention that the concept of borealism was first coined by Kristinn Schram of the University of Iceland in 2011, in articles like “Banking on Borealism: Eating, Smelling, and Performing the North” and “Borealism: folkloristic perspectives on transnational performances and the exoticism of the North”
In any case, not long after I told my mom about borealism, we noticed that NRK was airing Der ingen skulle tru at nokon kunne bu, meaning something like “Where Nobody Would Think Somebody Could Live” — this is a TV show about people who live in inhospitable places around Norway, close to nature and all that. And mom remarked, “Is that a form of self-borealism?”, and I said, “Maybe.”
But ultimately, just because someone wrote a couple articles about it, and it got a Wikipedia page, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is an accurate or useful concept. The term “borealism” is not in any major dictionaries — not even Wiktionary — and the concept of borealism has seen very little discussion or usage in academia compared to orientalism since it was first introduced. This can probably be partially chalked up to orientalism being a much older term that covers the exoticization of a much larger share of Earth’s land and population, where the power dynamics, harm, and extremity of such exoticization tend to be much more readily apparent.
From my own perspective I can certainly say that I’ve seen people exoticize the Nordic and Arctic regions in weird ways, and locals do by all means play into these same exoticizations — and I can further say that I absolutely believe that the presentation of Norway as exotic in this manner is tied to the power dynamics between Norway and other regions.
However it also kinda feels like… can’t you say that about every region? Like are we also gonna have an “occidentalism” and an “australism” just to get the “full set”, or is there really something special about the concept of the “exotic north” that makes it uniquely deserving of its own term? I suppose I should read Kristinn’s articles first to get a better idea of what he meant by the term and why he thinks it’s useful.
https://www.brepols.net/products/978-2-503-58502-4
You might find this one interesting.
This one is a little more Canada-specific and infrastructure-specific (and I’m only 1/3 of the way through), but I’ve found the investigation into what the modern North is and how it came to be interesting. Many Norths: Spacial Practice in a Polar Territory
makes me think of the reverence towards the “nordic model” in politics/econ. for self-borealisim, i wonder if its also tied to Norways discrimination of Sami people. so it would make more sense as a term, because there is a coloniser/colonised relationship. the tv show that you mentioned is a classic colonialist trope of painting a land as unpopulated.
I guess so, but I’m pretty sure most of the episodes of the show are set south of the Sámi traditional lands.
In some episodes they are in the traditional lands and in what I assume to be an attempt to be balance, there are a few where one of the people featured has Sami roots.
Most of the episodes interestingly really work to other both the people the show features as odd and not living to the norm and yet also feature them as exotic. They brush ever so cautiosly on the ways the country has ended services and factually enforced remote areas to be places where only the most privileged can now choose to live.
This show would be a great one to analyze as a whole.
This can probably be partially chalked up to orientalism being a much older term that covers the exoticization of a much larger share of Earth’s land and population, where the power dynamics, harm, and extremity of such exoticization tend to be much more readily apparent.
I would argue that orientalism and borealism are ideological antipodes as far as their use within the superstructure is concerned. Whereas orientalism (and related concepts like White Man’s Burden) creates a mandate for the subjugation of a region, borealism constructs an idealized hyper-whiteness. An exemplary model justifying white supremacy. Of course, the mythological Nordic is a bit too quirky, a bit too odd, a bit too much Ham Sandwich Race, so that us occidentals do not have to feel bad and can keep treating their home as a tourist destination that is a bit too devoid of sunlight, a bit too cold and a bit too fond of fermented fish delicacies to want to live there permanently, but it ultimately fits like a puzzle piece into the racialization narratives of western chauvinism.
I just heard of this, so IDK what I’m talking about, but wouldn’t borealism include indigenous groups in these arctic regions that were colonized? Like maybe modern borealism is all about white people, but those white people did in fact subjugate those regions and do genocides. And there’s definitely a kind of paradoxical view of people in arctic regions similar to the “noble savage” view of indigenous groups in North America.
Very good point, hadn’t considered this because i’ve also just heard the term for the first time and was just typing out what spontaneously came to mind. Definitely my inner krakkker at work when i left out the Saami or the Inuit and First Nations in Greenland and Kanada (which, at least from a European perspective, i would probably include in borealism).
And also the Alaska Natives and for that matter the Natives of the Russian Far North.
Edit: Apropos the Natives of the Russian Far North, in (at least some) South Slavic languages like Serbo-Croatian, Tunguzija is used as their equivalent to “Timbuktu” in the sense of “nonspecific distant, remote, exotic place” — “Tungus” being a dated term for Evenks, who are native to a large area in the east of Krasnoyarsk Krai, very close to the geographical midpoint of Siberia. I learned this little fact because there’s a Svemirko album called “Tunguzija” and I got curious about what that meant.
The Inuit of Greenland has two roles in white Danish imagination, either they are the “noble savages” wearing pearl embroidery and living in harmony with nature as they row their kayaks on the icy fjords or they are the “tragic savages”, hapless children unable to take care of themselves in the modern world instead succumbing to alcoholism, apathy and hopelessness.
The noble and the tragic savage are two sides of the same coin and neither stereotype leaves them much agency.
Sounds like that applies to Ireland as well, although I don’t know if it would be the correct term. Americans have an image of Ireland as a magical old place where the forests are alive, and some really don’t like knowing that Ireland is a modern country. Some Irish people also are very insistent that Ireland is more superstitious and magical than it is, putting a lot of importance on tales of the fae and respecting magpies and so on, even though most Irish people don’t actually know anything about folklore.
I’ve heard people call that “hibernophilia” before, dunno if that’s a proper term though
Lol what on earth, I just chose Finland at random but burger racism beat me to it
Yeah, Finns just straight up weren’t seen as white back in those days, they were classified as part of the “Mongolian race” ostensibly because Finnish is a Uralic language rather than Indo-European.
