In this artist talk, Kajsa Zetterquist and Anja Kath 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.

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 the Nordland and Northern Norway art scene – and continues to be so 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.

A stranger, a fiddler from Greece, traveled north to the mythical land of Hyperboria. Traveled north expecting desolation and isolation - freezing cold and loneliness. Despite this, he traveled here, north in search of the shining northern lights that illuminate the dark night sky. But the northern lights that shone brightest here were phyros, the lanterns his people call pháros.

Along the coast they stand – silent and steadfast, lit by people who have kept the light alive for each other for generations. The light from the lighthouse invites those who have lost their way - towards a safe harbor, where you can belong.

Fyr Pháros is a musical experience with Celtic harp, bandoneon, tarhu and violin. The project started in 2019 when Julie (Harp) and Andreas Rokseth (Bandoneon) invited Michalis Cholevas (Tarhu) to an artist residency on the lighthouse island of Sula.

When Michalis , Julie and Andreas meet, musical traditions from Greece and Norway also meet. Stories from the coasts of Greece, Trøndelag and Northern Norway are carried forward and conveyed in this concert experience.

This morning, a shorter version of the concert Fyr Pháros is presented as an artistic break during the Hospitality Symposium. The concert, like the symposium, springs from encounters between people, places and stories. Here, north and south, strangers and hosts, sea and light, meet in music that reminds us of the importance of meeting each other with openness and curiosity.

We hope the concert can provide a small space for presence and community amidst the conversations and meetings that the Hospitality Symposium invites you to.

We are having lunch at Stormen bibliotek .

How is hospitality understood and practiced at libraries in Norway and Sweden ? Both countries see the library as an open and democratic meeting place , with a responsibility to facilitate dialogue, conversation and debate . In Norway, this is enshrined in legislation that requires libraries to function as independent arenas for public conversation, while both Norwegian and Swedish studies show how libraries are developed as social meeting places with a strong emphasis on community and participation.

The session examines how these traditions are managed in practice, and what measures can strengthen the library's role as a hospitable and inclusive institution.

Participants

• Stine Qvigstad Jenvin , library manager, Stormen bibliotek

• Therese Ytter , advisor, Regional Administration - culture, Västra Gøtaland

• Eva Fred , advisor, Regional Administration - culture, Västra Gøtaland

Moderator

• Elin Golten , manager, Western Norway library development

When future researchers write the history of Nordland, what sources will they have available? In recent years, Arkiv i Nordland has worked to collect archival material from various minority groups. These are people who have helped shape today's Nordland society - neighbors, friends, colleagues, mothers and fathers, politicians, business owners and volunteers. But minority groups have been poorly represented in the archives. By collecting interviews with people from various minorities, Arkiv i Nordland wants to ensure that the stories of minority groups also become part of history! Mediator at Arkiv i Nordland Sigrid Solheim will tell you more about these collection projects and the stories they tell.

What happens to the idea of ​​the good life when an economic ecologist, a Sami artist and architect, a historian – and a stranger we don’t yet know – are allowed to gaze upon it? This event gets right to the point: How does hospitality challenge our notions of what really matters?

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You will hear posts from:

-professor of ecological economics Ove D. Jacobsen

-Professor of History Steinar Aas.

-Jowan Abbas Mohammad

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Moderated by Steinar Aas .

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From anti-democratic forces to climate change and war: How can cooking together and sharing food with others be one of the most radical things we do in the face of the challenges of our time? 

 Author and food writer Andreas Liebe Delsett (b. 1984 in Bodø) has spent several years delving into the connections between food culture and social development. He is now the subject of a new book called Cape of Good Hope. A journey in post-apartheid South Africa . 

 In this originally written lecture, Delsett takes as his starting point a story from present-day South Africa that can be found in this book. It is about a dinner he participated in, in the remote and for most completely unknown region called Mpondoland. Here people have fought for their land, for food sovereignty and food culture, through colonial times and apartheid. And the fight continues, after liberation in 1994, against forces with lines of connection also to our part of the world. 

Else Kåss Furuseth and Cecilie Ramona Kåss Furuseth discuss how we can show greater hospitality in our encounters with each other. The conversation is set in a larger context where they highlight challenges related to increasing loneliness and the consequences loneliness can have for individuals and society.