Felicia Söderqvist. Photo: Staffan Westerlund
16 August 2024
Socio-cultural consequences of hydropower in Sweden
Friday 31 May, Felicia Söderqvist talked about the long-term socio-cultural consequences of hydropower in Sweden in a session about Arctic green transitions at Arctic Congress Bodø 2024.
Felicia Söderqvist is a doctoral student in history at Luleå University of Technology and an Arctic Five Fellow.
In her doctoral project she uses two cases: Laholm in Southern Sweden and Akkats in the Swedish Arctic.
The Laholm hydropower station was finished in 1932 in a comparatively urban and slightly idustrialised environment dominated by a medieval castle with some dependency on local salmon fishery and tourism. In contrast, the Akkats hydropower station, finished in 1973, was built in a less populated area heavily dependent on forestry and timber floating, reindeer herding, ice roads and fishing.
Using archival research and oral history, Felicia Söderqvist shows that the Laholm hydropower station is viewed as natural part of the environment and part of the cultural heritage of the region, whereas Akkats remains a highly ethnopolitical topic.
There are two sides to the coin in Akkats. On the one hand, the hydropower station company is a very important regional employer. On the other hand, it has had severe impacts on the natural landscape and thus on Sámi reindeer herding and culture. Older people in the region remember when the river went silent. Felicia Söderqvist noticed that younger participants in Akkats expressed similar perspectives as the older participants in Laholm: “The hydropower station has always been there.”
The Akkats power station is on its way to enter a stage of heritagisation and normalisation in the meaning that its existence is no longer questioned.
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