Exploring Cultural Ecologies & Sustainable Adaptation across Icelandic Communities

As the Arctic cryosphere retreats, converging forces see both threat and opportunity in Far North: a fragile ecosystem ripe for either their exploitation or protection. These external narratives, however, often neglect the agency Arctic environments and communities have in shaping their own futures. This project integrates geoscientific experimentation with cultural ecologies and ethnographic inquiry to explore Icelandic trajectories in response to Arctic change—from passive carbonation potentials to sustainable tourism and green infrastructure development. The Charles Swithinbank Expedition seeks to learn from place-based knowledge, centering Icelandic people and their surroundings and reimagining Arctic research as a shared dialogue of pedagogy.