Contributors
Tone Bjordam
Graduated from the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts, she works in a wide range of media, including video, performance, photography, drawing, painting, soundscapes and sculptural installations. In her artistic practice, she explores transformations in nature, societal changes and human inner processes – with particular emphasis on geological, climatic and biological processes. Through studies of forms, patterns and processes in nature, both from a micro and macro perspective, she develops an expression that is both distinctive and deeply rooted in ecological and visual contexts.
Kajsa Zetterquist
Kajsa Zetterquist is a Swedish-Norwegian visual artist with deep roots in the nature and culture of northern Norway. Through a long artistic career together with her life partner Per Adde, she has been a supporting figure in Nordland and Northern Norway art life – and still is to this day. Their shared commitment to nature conservation, animals, Sami culture and Sami rights and, not least, artistic freedom has left lasting traces – not as memories, but as living impulses in the landscape and art.
Anja Kath Lande, curator at Adde Zetterquist Art Gallery, has worked closely with Zetterquist for several years. She has been a key communicator of the couple's artistic legacy, including through memorial exhibitions and curatorial projects that continue their life's work with care and insight.
In this artist talk, Zetterquist and Lande meet for a conversation about how art can open paths towards community across time, place and experience, as a language that both protects and challenges, connects and changes.
Hildegunn Pettersen
Hildegunn is an opera singer and artist who has chosen to move back to her childhood island, after many years in the capital, and she will be found on stage, where she specializes in communicating local history through song and music. Hildegunn is hosting the stay at Røst , where she will be responsible for organizing all the activities on Røst from our arrival to our departure. She will also tell about Røst history both through a tour of the island and other features.
Marzia Liuzza
Marzia Liuzza is a PhD candidate in historical, geographical and anthropological studies at the University of Padova and Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Her research focuses on sustainable tourism, community-based tourism, participatory heritage management, and how cultural institutions can foster dialogue between places, people and identities. She explores how tourism can become a tool for cultural exchange, local development and the protection of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage.
She leads a research project on the cultural itinerary Via Querinissima, with Røst as a pilot area. In addition, she is responsible for the communication work in the Via Querinissima International Cultural Association where she works as a communications advisor. Here, she combines expertise in cultural routes and tourism research with professional communication to strengthen the visibility and understanding of the Via Querinissima Cultural Route.
Stefano Agnoletto
Stefano Agnoletto is a historian and economist with two doctorates from IUN University in Naples and Kingston University in London. He has worked as a researcher, coordinator and lecturer at academic institutions and public and private organizations in Europe and North America, and has published over a hundred scientific articles and several monographs. Since 2022, he has been the project manager for Nordland County Municipality in the Via Querinissima project, as well as the head of the scientific committee and a member of the international team of the Via Querinissima International Association.
Sara Bruteig Olsen
Sara Bruteig Olsen has created and is performing in the performance “Q”. The performance Q(uerini) revolves around how movement happens, whether we want it to or not. Sometimes invisible, other times very visible, and palpable, as in a crisis.
Q(uerini) is the story of movement. Of course the obvious one - the journey you embark on. But also the one you get, which you don't choose - the world that moves you.
Movement is value-neutral, it can lead to both desired and unwanted places, both adventure and shipwreck, both solitude and community. It depends on what you put into it.
Q(uerini) is the story of some people who chose to fight to survive, and a people who chose to help others.
Q(uerini) is also the story of a people free from xenophobia, or fear of the other. What is hospitality, if not opening up to the other, which the movement demands?
It takes a certain kind of courage to be in motion.
Both to embark on a journey in unpredictable waters
and to welcome travelers from unknown waters.
Maybe these people meet in this courage?
Because what if it had been different?
That we never set out on journeys. That we never accepted what was not invited.
Erika Søfting
Ethnologist
Erika Søfting is an ethnologist and works at the Nordlandsmuseet. Here she has worked extensively with the cultural history of northern Norway, and especially with coastal culture and trade history, in addition to museum development. She has, among other things, been manager at Kjerringøy Handelssted, and project manager for the development of Jektefartsmuseet and the exhibition there. She is now head of research and collections in the museum's departments in Bodø, Gildeskål and Meløy.
Coastal culture and trade have provided contact and connections between the North and the world for hundreds of years. The sea was a highway, not an obstacle, and people on the coast had much contact with other parts of the country, and people from other countries and cultures.
In her presentation, she will show how hospitality has been important in meetings and contact during the time of the dinghy voyage and at northern Norwegian trading posts. How were "strangers" greeted when they traveled north? What contact did northerners have on dinghy voyages and trading posts south and out into the world? How were they connected with Europe?
Steinar Aas
Steinar Aas, professor of modern history. Has worked on a number of topics within northern Norwegian history. Has written the history of Narvik for the period 1890 - 1950 and the history of Bodø for the same period. He has also worked on a number of topics related to the rise of the labor movement, on identity production, regionalism, press history and memory politics and the use of history.
Elin Golten
Elin Golten is head of library development in Vestland County Municipality. She has a Ph.D in library and information science from OsloMet. The topic of her thesis is public libraries as social and democratic arenas in a digital age. Elin is a member of the Public Library Section of IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions), where she participates in a group that works on public libraries and democracy in a global perspective.