Arctic Women – Svalbard Movements premieres

At the end of the world, in a frozen landscape, Reijo Kela and I spent several weeks rolling around in coal dust at an old railway station on Svalbard to create the first version of our new piece, Arctic Women. It premiered at the literature festival in Longyearbyen in September 2019.

Arctic Women, about women in the Arctic and the effect of nature on the soul, is the result of years of research by the actor Juni Dahr and me into the stories of women in the far north, and Reijo Kela and Snorri Freyr Hilmarsson have joined us on this wonderful journey.

In this first version, Svalbard Movements, we used texts from the diaries of Léonie d’Aunet, a French noblewoman who in 1838 became the first woman to set foot there; the botanist Hanne Resvold-Holmsen, who walked its land in 1907; Christiane Ritter, who spent a winter in a trapper’s hut with her husband in 1934; and Ellen Nøis, a Norwegian housewife who gave birth alone while her husband was out hunting. By popular demand, I performed it in Norwegian (which I don’t otherwise speak).

It was an honour to share the stage with Reijo and the brilliant saxophonist Tore Brunborg, who composed the music and performed it live with drummer Per Oddvar. And the male choir of the coal mining company Store Norske gave their all.

The director was Inger Buresund and the lighting designer Kristin Bredal – both extraordinarily talented women.