On Saturday November 29, the third edition of Pan-Arcticvision will take place. It’s a gleefully low-budget production, so don’t expect any holograms or laser effects. But you can expect a rebellious spirit, solidarity with marginalised people, and a joyful desire to represent those communities that live on the edge of the inhabitable world.
Previous editions have featured Sami hip-hop, Inuit throat-singing, Icelandic metal and protest songs by Russian dissidents. This year will see artists from Alaska, Nunavut, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes, Yakutia and the Sami communities from Norway, Sweden and Finland. They’ll compete for not one but four titles – “most Arctic song”, “most revolutionary song”, “the song that gives the most feeling of community and togetherness”, and the greatest title of all, “the place in the Arctic that really needs a prize and deserves to host the next edition of the Pan-ArcticVision”.
The Beginnings Of Pan-ArcticVision
Last weekend, I spoke via Zoom to Amund Sjølie Sveen, the artistic director of Pan-Arcticvision (you can hear the full interview here). He was dialling in from Iqaluit, the capital city of Nunavut, where this year’s contest will be held. One could hardly imagine a more unlikely place to have an international song contest. Nunavut is a semi-autonomous Inuit territory in the far north of Canada. Iqaluit, with a population of just 7,500, is only accessible by air or, in the summer months, by sea. Despite this, Amund spoke warmly of the welcome he has received there, with “a wonderful music festival, that is our partner. Skilful people. Getting in and out is not difficult. It’s just expensive. Equipment is expensive to get in, and the Internet connection is not the most stable in the world. But it’s all going really well, and we really feel welcomed by the community of Iqaluit and Nunavut.”
Amund is an artist and musician from northern Norway who seeks to unite Arctic communities, who have a shared sense of being “on the edge”, not just geographically, but also politically, existing far from the population centres where decisions about their lives are often made. In 2014 he founded NordTing (Norwegian for “the Northern Parliament”), which describes itself as “a nomadic people’s parliament of the North”, “a party for the periphery” and “a separatist movement for the Arctic colony”. It was out of NordTing that PanArcticvision emerged in 2023.
Amund freely admits, “at the beginning we thought this was a one-off event, because it was exciting to do it once. We really had no idea of bringing it further. So, we’re in a very different situation now. Third edition now; it’s a tradition, isn’t it?”
The first winners were Nuija, an indie band from Greenland, and the following year the contest was repeated in Nuuk. In a nod to the way Arctic peoples are often subject to the whims of faraway capitals, Pan-ArcticVision 2024 included a Eurovision-style “rest of the world” vote. Then, after voting concluded, a second vote was held by the Arctic communities on whether to include the rest of the world vote in the results. They voted not to. One wonders what the results of a similar audience poll at Eurovision would be.
Representation Matters
The 2024 contest was won by Iva and Angu, an Inuit throat-singing duo from Nunavut, and so this year Pan-ArcticVision has moved to Iqaluit. Among those competing will be Geðbrigði, an Icelandic rock band who describe their sound as “Drunga-þunga-paunk-rokk (gloomy-heavy-punk-rock)”. Alaska is represented by Quinn Christopherson with his song Denali, which speaks of colonial battles over language. Alaska’s highest peak was officially called Mount McKinley, after the 25th President of the United States. In 2015, the Obama administration ordered it changed to its indigenous name of Denali. In January 2025 the Trump administration changed it back to McKinley, in a gratuitous act of white supremacism and cultural erasure.
A politically complex issue involves those Arctic communities that reside in the Russian Federation. Half of the Arctic land mass is within Russia’s borders, and for that reason, Pan-ArcticVision deems it untenable to exclude these communities entirely. For the first two contests, the category “Russian Arctic Exiles” was created. This was open to dissident musicians who had fled Russia in the wake of 2022’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
These exiles were represented in 2023 by Katia Gilman with her song Prosty Menya, which translates as “forgive me” – a title with obvious connotations given the ongoing war. 2024’s artist was Evgeny Goman with RAX, which condemns Kremlin propaganda. For 2025, the requirement to be in exile has been relaxed, and indigenous artist Saina represents Yakutia, also known as the Republic of Sakha. This is a vast territory in the Russian Far East. Saina describes herself as a singer, teacher and mentor, performing with traditional instruments and singing in the indigenous languages of Yakutia.
Amund insists that the artists of Pan-Arcticvision do not represent their governments, and certainly not politicians and tyrants such as Putin. Instead, “our participants are not representing anyone but themselves. Maybe their own community.” This insistence carries an echo of the Eurovision refrain that “broadcasters enter, not governments.” However, the EBU’s words are looking increasingly unconvincing, given the large-scale advertising paid by the Israeli government to secure the televote in the last two years. By contrast, Pan-Arcticvision’s refrain feels much more authentic, thanks to the anarchic feel of the show, and its focus on people from the periphery, not the centres of power.
Amund adds, “As opposed to Eurovision, we say the more politics the better. Eurovision is a vision that comes from the capitals, the power centres of Europe, but our vision is coming from a very different place. It’s from the marginalised place.”
The show will be livestreamed from Pan-ArcticVision.Org on Saturday 29th November, 20:00 Greenwich Mean Time, 21:00 Central European Time.