This artistic research project examines how colonial narratives about the Arctic have been produced and legitimised through scientific discourse, expedition narratives and visual representation. The project is grounded in the concept of narrative sovereignty, which emphasises Indigenous peoples’ right to articulate and control their own stories and historical experiences.
Central to the project is the concept of Arctic hysteria – Piblokto, a pseudoscientific diagnosis attributed to Inuit women in north-west Greenland during the era of polar exploration. Introduced by the polar explorer Robert E. Peary, the term circulated in medical and anthropological literature as a scientific explanation of a supposed culture-specific mental disorder despite very limited empirical evidence.
Using documentary storytelling as an artistic research method, the project combines film, archival material, artistic interpretation and historical analysis to examine how observations, images and narratives produced in a specific historical context could be transformed into scientific knowledge. The project is conducted within a multidisciplinary research environment where artists from Kalaallit Nunaat and Sápmi collaborate with filmmakers, researchers and writers from Sweden to critically reinterpret colonial image production, memory and counter-narratives.
