International Women’s Day 2022

Lene Therese Teigen in Longyearbyen

For this year’s International Women’s Day we would like to welcome our new resident Lene Therese Teigen, who returned to Svalbard yesterday (March 7th). Lene Therese has kindly written a short introduction about herself and the research she will be doing during her stay at Artica:

I am Lene Therese Teigen, a writer and theatre director from Oslo and I’m currently a resident at Artica Svalbard with a project called «Svalbard Letters 1630-2030». I like to talk with people about their lives, and then turn the stories into art. I always have a gender perspective in my work, maybe that is why it is interesting for me to find out the connection between ‘arctic fever’ and the will to be with your chosen partner. My stories will be both historic and contemporary, especially digging up the different women who have come here to work and/or explore, or to follow their partners. How does the place and landscape shape their stories about partnership and Svalbard?

I am aware of the fact that a lot of women come here to explore nature and to work, and I am interested in finding out what their stories are in connection to love: a partner or a landscape/place? How do they merge? How does staying in Svalbard shape the idea of what a woman is or can be? 

Last year during the Literature Festival my play Time without books was performed in the old Taubanesentralen, which really was a magic place to be. In 2021 I also published two books, one of them the play Mater Nexus from 2000, which the newspaper Klassekampen regarded as a forgotten feminist classic. The play has been performed in many countries, and has meant a lot too many audiences. I am very proud to be able to give more stories about brave and special women to the world.

Happy women’s day!

Find out more about Lene Therese here.