The Arctic airport: Infrastructural pasts, presents and futures

What is Arctic airport infrastructure for and for whom? How does this change over time and what do these changes say about how we make sense of and value the places where it is developed? In this paper, we discuss these questions through the telling case of Kangerlussuaq. ‘Born’ as Bluie West Eight, an American airbase during the World War II, known as well under a third (Danish) name as Sønder Strømfjord, it is today Greenland’s main international airport and air transportation hub. As two international and one regional airport are set to open elsewhere in Greenland in years to come, Kangerlussuaq’s place in Greenland’s airport infrastructure appears to slip. At the same time, planners are finding already-established connections difficult to sever. Diving into archives, drawing on exhibition prospects and bringing forth conversations in and about Kangerlussuaq, we analyse how many versions of the airport – past, present, and future - have and do co-exist. We end up by arguing that much can be learnt about the prospecting, construction and becoming undone of Arctic infrastructures from how Kangerlussuaq has been imagined and performed through almost a century.