Rethinking Silence within Arctic Echosystems (with stories by Inger-Mari Aikio, Mathis Eira and Ellen-Johanne Kvalsvik)

Building upon the acoustemologies of the Sámi – the only officially recognized Indigenous people in continental Europe – this article seeks to reconsider the ecologies and aesthetics of “silence” in light of the biocultural framework of Arctic echosystems. The contents are gathered in a parallel plot of histories of listening from Indigenous and non-Indigenous stakeholders, from which distinct narratives of silence emerge. On one hand, silence is either presented as a hallmark of pristine, untouched nature, or a romanticized desert – both natural and cultural – echoing colonial ideologies of Terra nullius. On the other hand, within Indigenous acoustemologies, silence is indeed recognized as a distinctive feature of the Land, yet not as an absence of sound but as a state in which even the faintest of sounds emerges prominent and meaningful. The introduction of oversnow and all-terrain vehicles in the Arctic variably altered this multifaceted understanding of silence, as the article critically interrogates the responses of both Sámi and settler audiences to this loud anthropic sound source. Whether or not, paraphrasing Schafer, the sound of snowmobiles destroys a mystified “idea of North”, it is crucial to recognize that the same sound is also valued as familiar or even homely by Indigenous peoples who have fully integrated these vehicles into their traditional livelihoods. Using the anthropogenic noise of snowmobiles as a critical and counterpointal lens within Arctic echosystems, silence is consulted through the perspective of Sámi acoustemologies, challenging the sonic colonialities inherent in top-down approaches to ecoacoustic conservation, and tracing the sonic reciprocities matured among people, machines, and other Earth beings of the tundra.