Arctic Norway - aspects of History, Culture and Politics (ARCTNOR03)

STUDY PROGRAMME
I SEMESTER: 30 STUDY POINTS (equivalent to 30 ECTS credits)

Further information:
Steinar Aas
Tlf:776 45569
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Description of the programme
The Arctic Norway programme consists of courses offered by three departments of the Faculty of Social Science: the departments of History, Social Anthropology and Political Science. The programme is offered every autumn semester, and the three courses run simultaneously through the whole semester.

The programme is designed to give students knowledge and understanding of the history, culture and politics of the northern part of Norway, as a part of the nation state of Norway and the wider Arctic region. North Norway has strong regional characteristics, formed over many centuries out of the multi-ethnic populations’s struggle to make a living from the harsh landscape of the interior, and the rugged but fruitful coastline.

The programme is specially designed for foreign students, and all of the lectures, seminar discussions, written work and course literature will be in English.

The teaching component of each of the three courses will be of approximately 40 hours, spread over the the 19 weeks of the autumn semester. Thirty hours will be classroom tuition, both in the form of lecture classes and less formal seminars which will normally focus on specific parts of the course literature. Some weeks will be set aside as reading and writing weeks to allow students to concentrate (under guidance) on these activities. The remaining hours of tuition will take the form of activities outside the classroom, related to teaching and to written tasks, and conducted by all three courses together. These activities will include trips out to the fishing village of Sommarøy and to a preserved farm of the 18th and 19th centuries, a visit to prehistoric rock carvings near Tromsø, close studies of excellent local museum collections, and so on.

Written exercises will vary in length, but we have set a maximum of 20 machine-written pages for each course in the Arctic Norway programme.

Course reading will consist of a compulsory common core of about 600 pages for each course (called in Norwegian the pensum, and which will be fundamental to written exercises), with additional reading on a range of topics to be recommended by the course tutors. As soon as students register for this course, they will be sent details of the core reading, together with details of supplementary reading to provide a contextual background. This will include general Norwegian history, writings about aspects of the northern region, and notable works of literature that deal with North Norway.

Upon successful completion of each course the student will be awarded 10 ECTS credits – a total of 30 for the whole programme.

There will be no final examinations; instead, students will be assessed by written tasks during each of the courses, and awarded a grade between A (the highest) and F (failure).

Student intake

The courses have university status as Socrates courses, but welcome all student categories from every country in the world. The courses are open to all students registered on a university-level course elsewhere, or qualifying for registration to such a course.

In recent years students have come from the Scandinavian countries and other countries of the European Union; from eastern Europe, including Russia; from the United States and Canada; from Brazil, Pakistan and Kenya.

Responsibility for the programme
A committee representing the participating departments is responsible for the programme, which is formally under the control of the Faculty of Social Sciences, the University of Tromsø.

The Arctic Norway programme

Autumn semester
- HIS-1111: Aspects of History (10 credits)
- SOA-1006: Aspects of Culture (10 credits)
- STV-1006: Aspects of Politics and International relations (10 credits)

Seminars on each of the three seminars are at these hours:
HIS-1111: Mondays 10.15-12.00, room C-1005, Faculty of Soc. science
STV-1006: Wednesdays 14.15-16.00, room C-1007, Fac. of Soc.Science
SOA-1006: Fridays 12.15.-14.00, room C-1003, Fac. of Soc. Science