Svalbard in the Norwegian Press Imagination

The article traces how Norwegian newspapers imagined Svalbard as part of the nation. By applying digital humanities methods developed at the National Library of Norway, in combination with discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992; Foucault 1972), it identifies the main spatial imaginaries and communicative registers in press coverage of Svalbard. As the analysis shows, these are circumpolar, mainland-territorial and regional Northern Norwegian imaginaries. Especially in the period from the early 1920s to 1940s, newspapers primarily include short operational and practical reports on fishing, coal mining infrastructure updates, meteorological bulletins and scientific notices. This may be understood as the reproduction of national belonging through seemingly ordinary informational practices.