I was recently in a conversation with my mom where she mentioned how a lot of her friends and relatives in the USA have been sharing on Facebook just absolute nonsense about Norway: videos and posts with exaggerated if not flat-out incorrect facts about the country, and more notably, "AI-generated" pictures of fairy tale-esque natural scenes. Mom said how she pointed out to one of her relatives who shared such a "photo", how it was made up, and that relative got a bit irate about my mom's comment and said, "Who cares if it's AI?! It's a nice picture!" — even though that relative seemed to fully believe it was a real photo right until mom pointed out it wasn't, and left no indication that it was not a real photo.
...So that's a bit concerning, "post-truth" as they say.
Relaying this anecdote to me, mom remarked, "I mean, seriously, what if someone came to Norway hoping to see these crazy flowers and natural phenomena and stuff? The locals would be like, 'What the heck are you talking about? That doesn't exist.' — So how can someone share misinformation like that, and just not care simply because it's a 'nice picture'? It's bizarre." — And I said that someone coming to Norway because of "AI-generated" pictures would be like the modern-day version of Gregor MacGregor's Poyais scheme.
Anyways, after relaying this anecdote to me, mom then remarked something to the effect of that it's as if her friends and relatives in the USA think of Norway as this magical mystical fairy tale country, and will cling to anything that lets them keep that conception, no matter how ridiculous it is, and will get upset if you try to poke holes in their "mythologizing". And I said, "That's called borealism, isn't it?" — and she hadn't heard that term, so I read the Wikipedia article to give her a basic idea of it.
Borealism is a form of exoticism in which stereotypes are imposed on the Earth's northern regions and cultures (particularly the Nordic and Arctic regions).
The term was inspired by the similar concept of Orientalism, first coined by Edward Said. An early form of Borealism can be identified in antiquity, especially Roman writings; but, like Orientalism, Borealism came to flourish in eighteenth-century European Romanticism and Romantics' fantasies about distant regions. Borealism can include the paradoxical ideas that the North is uniquely savage, inhospitable, or barbaric, and that it is uniquely sublime, pure, or enlightened.
A further form of borealism is the explicit invocation of the boreal by white-supremacist far-right politicians.
The Wikipedia article neglects to mention that the concept of borealism was first coined by Kristinn Schram of the University of Iceland in 2011, in articles like "Banking on Borealism: Eating, Smelling, and Performing the North" and "Borealism: folkloristic perspectives on transnational performances and the exoticism of the North"
In any case, not long after I told my mom about borealism, we noticed that NRK was airing Der ingen skulle tru at nokon kunne bu, meaning something like "Where Nobody Would Think Somebody Could Live" — this is a TV show about people who live in inhospitable places around Norway, close to nature and all that. And mom remarked, "Is that a form of self-borealism?", and I said, "Maybe."
But ultimately, just because someone wrote a couple articles about it, and it got a Wikipedia page, doesn't necessarily mean that it is an accurate or useful concept. The term "borealism" is not in any major dictionaries — not even Wiktionary — and the concept of borealism has seen very little discussion or usage in academia compared to orientalism since it was first introduced. This can probably be partially chalked up to orientalism being a much older term that covers the exoticization of a much larger share of Earth's land and population, where the power dynamics, harm, and extremity of such exoticization tend to be much more readily apparent.
From my own perspective I can certainly say that I've seen people exoticize the Nordic and Arctic regions in weird ways, and locals do by all means play into these same exoticizations — and I can further say that I absolutely believe that the presentation of Norway as exotic in this manner is tied to the power dynamics between Norway and other regions.
However it also kinda feels like... can't you say that about every region? Like are we also gonna have an "occidentalism" and an "australism" just to get the "full set", or is there really something special about the concept of the "exotic north" that makes it uniquely deserving of its own term? I suppose I should read Kristinn's articles first to get a better idea of what he meant by the term and why he thinks it's useful.
As someone who has grown up in these countries I'd say that this is probably heavily tied to nationalism and banal nationalism. And is also super-actively utilized in country branding.
I have watched "at nokon skulle bu" and it perfectly fits the nation building rhetorics that are common in these countries with a myth of "the independent farmer/dweller" who (a man) lives of the land by carving a spot from the wilderness etc. The show btw. is also very pathriarchal in its narrative and extremely heteronormative with nordic country equality discourse qualities. It is the perfect "The Nordics" PR show.
From the Finnish pov I know that in the late 1800s the national bourge heavily took on this project of portraying nationalism into the local nature, the forests and fjords and animals. And unifying the masses under this image. This never included the indigenous Sami or Karelian or other minorities however.
Tolkien supposedly kind of engaged in this myth building about the North or the people living in the north and so did the nazis. Which is why I think it resembles the sort of myth making you often see of places like the Scottish Highlands as well. Places were groups of independent white men live of nature and the nature is wild. I think it is coded with white supremacy.
But today in neoliberalism these countries are very effectively commodifying this. And also commodifying the myths of the socdem haven in the process. The way the nordic model is talked about or things like "finland has eradicated homelessness" get thrown around are a testament to this. You add to this a few pictures of gorgeous aurora and a discourse about equality, the myth starts to live a life of its own. But a lot of actual time and money is spent on this branding I think, tourism is what helps post-industrial capitalists and landowners survive.
So I don't know. It doesn't seem like it can be compared to Orientalism because a lot of this originates from within. Then again some of these countries have been more oppressed than the others so these nation building rhetorics are not a monolith.
How much of it really did originate from within, though? Like maybe I just don't know Norway's history well enough — you never can — but a loooot of the poets and writers and artists who played a crucial role in developing romantic nationalism in Norway, studied abroad, right? The iconic Brudeferden i Hardanger was painted by Hans Gude and Adolph Tidemand who both studied in Düsseldorf; otherwise Johan Nordal Brun composed Norway's first national anthem, "Norges Skaal", originally as a drinking song for the Norwegian Society in Copenhagen. Otherwise still, I feel like Norway has generally always imported a lot of media from other countries, from centuries ago and into the present day.
So basically, Norwegians would've probably been decently aware of how the country was perceived abroad — if not outright surrounded by the perspectives of more prestigious outsiders while studying abroad — and I have to imagine that that had a pretty big impact on how Norwegian nationalism developed.
That is true and same for Finland. All of them here also had non-Finnish names originally that they then changed to names sounding Finnish that were often nature-theamed during this period.
Most of the bourgeoisie also never were from here, the families that is.
The at least banal nationalism of today is largely based on the things from this era.
So maybe a better framing would be that it originates from European enlightenment.
Yeah.