ABSTRACT
Sparked by global climate change, rapid economic and industrial development in Asia and our ongoing demand for energy resources, the seemingly internationally insignificant High North/Arctic polities have called attention to their importance in the world market. Heavily dependent on imaginaries, hopes, dreams and, at times, wild anticipations of economic resources boom in oil and gas development and fisheries in the Arctic Ocean, mining on the Circumpolar Arctic landscape and winter tourism, communities in the High North have set the scene for spectacular performances to prove their value and their abilities to compete on the world stage. This chapter on ‘Spectacular Speculation: Arctic futures in transition’ frames these imaginaries, hopes, dreams and anticipations within tropes of hyperbuilding, hyperdevelopment and hyperindustrialisation elucidated in Aihwa Ong’s paradigm of ‘hyperspaces of sovereignty’ in Asia. I focus, however, not on the literal building of physical skyscrapers and signature structures of concrete and steel in order to symbolise greatness and prowess, but rather on the creation of hyperspaces of discourse exemplified in the pageantry of mega and spectacular events in three Arctic cities in the Norwegian High North: Tromsø, Kirkenes and Longyerbyen.
