It’s funny how wiki-walking can lead you off on tangents you would never have even considered. Over the course of revising my alternate timeline, I considered it more interesting to keep the Austro-Hungarian Empire intact during the 20th century, all the better to draw fragmented (and ethnically sensible) boundaries along the lines of the “United States of Greater Austria” plan…which then become virtually autonomous, but with the Habsburg Empire enduring in Vienna, much like the Holy Roman Empire before it.
But on the flip side, it might become more interesting to spin off areas that might be less obvious candidates. So it is with parts of Norway. Yes, Norway. Although it’s populated primarily by Norwegians from one end to the other, it is an awfully long country: the northeastern end is over 1000 miles from the capital in Oslo, which is located far to the south, and the northern territories themselves have a more Arctic orientation, as opposed to the south of the country, which naturally faces more toward the North Sea, and hence the mainstream of Europe. Hardly a fatal obstacle, but it’s a situation where a person might go “hey, this country’s too big for its own good”, and separation might start to make sense.
According to an article from 2008 cited by the Wikipedia page on Hålogaland, there was a proposal to do just that: separate the north as its own country, called Hålogaland, a name dating back to the Viking Age with rich connotations from the sagas. Properly Hålogaland doesn’t extend quite up to Norway’s remote reaches, but it was the northernmost reach of the Norse settlements during the Viking Age, and does include Lofoten and other areas that would be core to a Norwegian breakaway state centered north of the Arctic Circle.
Now, the movement from 2008 (if you can even call it a movement) succeeding in our time and place might be considered a stretch in the extreme…but in the alternate-history-cum-science-fictional-universe I write my stories in, decentralization, federalism, localism, and, yes, separatism is en vogue.
Where it gets really fancy is that there’s a renaissance of the indigenous peoples over the course of the 20th century, in terms of the culture, the politics, and even the economics; most relevantly, the Inuit in Canada gain near-total autonomy over their traditional lands and succeed at enriching themselves through developing these northernmost of the world’s wildernesses, perhaps providing a template that other Arctic peoples would consider relevant. Peoples such as the Sami, the indigenous inhabitants of northern Fennoscandia, a region properly known as Sápmi (also Lapland, after the older (and now-considered-offensive) name for the Sami people, the Lapps).
As such, there might be quite a movement among the indigenous population to establish a pan-Sami state spanning what’s now parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, a movement that in this timeline’s political environment could pose a serious threat. This would intersect with the increased interest in localism on the part of ethnic Norwegians in the portion controlled by Norway: why be ruled from Oslo, after all, a place a thousand miles away and nowhere near the Arctic, which is unresponsive and won’t listen to our concerns, when instead we could control our own destiny and spearhead the now-ongoing development of Earth’s last frontier?
What if both these movements came to a head, and the authorities in Oslo decided to be slick about it, detaching the arctic portions of Norway as its own state, a state that would blend in its very identity both Norwegian and Sami heritage? One that would be tethered in a close alliance with Norway (up to and including sharing the same monarch), the greater independence endearing Norwegian influence to the would-be-breakaway northerners, as well as offering something for many Sami to buy into…at the direct expense of the ambition to craft a pan-Sami state that would break away from Norwegian (as well as mainstream European) influence completely?
Yes, it’s still a little bit of a stretch, but just the name “the Kingdom of Hålogaland” sounds badass, let alone once you consider the spectacular landscapes and the Viking and Sami heritage. Aesthetically it’s better as well, as it breaks up that long, long monotony on Europe’s northwesternmost shoreline, and it helps to underscore just how alternate this alternate history is when you look at a map of the Arctic (an angle I already explored in a previous post).
More badass points for the Kingdom of Hålogaland come courtesy of it being the only independent state that is truly centered in the Arctic, rather than merely having territory inside of it: depending on how the borders are drawn, it may well be the only state entirely located north of the Arctic Circle. Certainly it would be the only independent state with its capital located north of the Arctic Circle: yes, even Greenland, should it emerge as fully independent in this timeline, would fall short, since its capital and largest city of Nuuk (originally Godthåb) is located at only 64 degrees north (two parallels south of the circle).
Hålogaland, on the other hand? The obvious capital for such a country would be Tromsø, located at 69 degrees north, comfortably within the Arctic. The climate is far milder than Nuuk’s owing to the North Atlantic Current, which tames the wrath of Boreas even on Spitsbergen (an outlying island in the Arctic Ocean at a studly 78 degrees north; check out Longyearbyen’s climate table).
Tromsø already has the infrastructure to be the capital of a small country (one that would grow immensely in this timeline courtesy of the frontier development trend, but would nevertheless still be modest). But that might not be alternate enough; besides, I’ve been to Tromsø and I didn’t care for the place too much (hehehe).
Narvik might be the next most obvious site for a capital, but it’s more southerly than even Tromsø, and what I have in mind would be a choice of capital that emphasizes the arctic orientation of the new state, a bold statement of, as they say in Alaska, “North to the Future!”. So Narvik is out.
Hammerfest presents itself as perhaps the next most obvious candidate, being the northernmost town of its size in the world, and one that in our timeline has decent enough infrastructure, albeit one designed to service a port and what’s in the grand scheme of things a small and remote town; nevertheless, it suggests that build-out in the alternate timeline would be simple (technology is more advanced and economies wealthier, so if we can build it out at all it would be easy to them; the really difficult projects by their standards would be something like Antarctic or off-world infrastructure).
There are places much further east and remote from rump Norway, the standout choice of which is Vardø, the easternmost town in what’s now Norway, which faces directly out to the Arctic Ocean. It’s also very close to the Russian border, however, and a capital ideally should be centrally located within the country it’s serving. It’s also not even the most northerly location; that honor belongs to the area surrounding Nordkapp.
And there is a grand total of one town of appreciable size that currently exists on the same island that Nordkapp is located on: Honningsvåg, another claimant to the most northern town in the world. While that’s debatable, it doesn’t get much further north than them in the Kingdom of Hålogaland; Honningsvåg is located at a studly 71 degrees north.
That far north, you don’t just get the sun skirting the horizon for a few days around the solstice: it stays a decent ways up into the golden hour zone even at midnight for weeks out of the summer. I’ve been there too, and the 70s north are where it starts to really feel like you’re in the Arctic (toward the upper end, at Svalbard’s position at the 78th parallel, it’s not even golden hour even at midnight during the summer; it looks like broad daylight even at midnight, which is considerably more impressive, albeit less beautiful).
The Nordkapp area is relatively central to the Kingdom of Hålogaland, and short of locating the capital on Nordkapp itself (just a few miles away on the northern end of the same island: Magerøya), you won’t make a bolder statement about North to the Future. The general area is beautiful and picturesque, with a massive fjord to the east of town extending far to the south, providing ample room for future expansion. Honningsvåg is a site of contrasts: near where the Arctic Ocean is generally held to meet the Atlantic Ocean, as well as near the tree line; at sea level, where the town is, it’s just warm enough for trees to grow, albeit not very tall (10 feet or so at maturity), but go just a little ways uphill or further north and the climate gives way to arctic tundra.
The town is even smaller and more remote than Hammerfest, but Honningsvåg does have what seems to be a good harbor (which, in common with the rest of the region, remains ice-free year-round), with ample opportunities for developing a picturesque waterfront district across from old town, ideal for a royal palace, parliament facilities, national gardens, museums, cultural centers and marine-oriented restaurants (complete with boat docks perhaps). As it is now small cruise ships regularly dock at Honningsvåg, so the facilities would likely be suitable for a national capital (even if they might need to be expanded and upgraded). Road connections are also decent even in our timeline; a rail connection could likely be built out as well if desired without too much difficulty.
The harbor and the waterfront being the centerpiece of the new city, I’m envisioning these trees being grown in the lowest elevations, the design of the new district of the town emphasizing ribbons of greenery directly connecting the harbor through the grid of the city, characterized by traditional Sami wood carvings and motifs woven into the architecture, canopies of trees being grown out in the lowest elevations and sheltered areas, the boundary beyond which they won’t grow any more being a natural border between the civilized environs of the City and the rugged environs of the Wild, these landscaped greenways transitioning to hiking trails that traverse the entire island of Magerøya, connecting Honningsvåg to Nordkapp and other points of interest (including Knivskjelodden, the actual northernmost point; yes, it’s a mile northward of Nordkapp, but it doesn’t have a road with a monument on it for whatever reason, whereas Nordkapp does).
Given the more rustic orientation of home construction in this timeline (owing to better transportation technology and less need for the population to be close to jobs), it seems likely that a broad area of rural sprawl will cover the island, since it’s all within 20 miles of the new capital of Honningsvåg. Somewhere like Skarsvåg, the northernmost fishing village (and indeed settlement of any kind) in the area, might become a tightly integrated satellite town, a favored secondary center for those denizens who prefer to live in the northerly reaches of the island.
Magerøya seems likely to experience something of a population boom anyway, since it’s popular enough as a tourist destination even today in the summer; in this timeline, with tourist numbers swelling globally, those numbers will rise, and with fewer jobs to tether people and more wealth to enable mobility, there could easily be full-fledged summer colonies centered on picturesque landscapes in the land of the midnight sun. It won’t take too long to figure out that Magerøya is a nice enough place to spend a winter as well (snow over the harbor during the polar night, and with temperatures not being nearly as bitter as, say, the Canadian Arctic), though summer populations will likely always be higher: even if the summerers all wanted to stick around the region for, say, skiing, the region’s most prime terrain for winter sports lies elsewhere.
A fascinating scenario, and one I brainstormed just based off of one line in a Wikipedia article I was reading randomly. Makes me want to do a whole short story on this or some such, or at least craft a custom Arctic map with the timeline’s borders, toponymy…ooh, that would be fun.
Also fun is imagining how all this would intersect with the rustication trend on an international scale: after all, the Netherlands and Germany don’t have enough room for half its population to spread out on rural acreages, and northern Scandinavia is right there with gorgeous landscapes, a Germanic culture, and mile upon mile of wide-open land. Regional fissures could erupt in other Nordic countries: imagine a Scania which agitates for more autonomy from Stockholm, potentially transforming Sweden into a federation right as the population explodes in the backcountry, offering the chance for the country to realize its full potential and be a much bigger player on the European or even world stage, but also presenting unprecedented challenges.
As you can surmise, there are all sorts of angles a worldbuilder could take this, but for now, I’ll leave it at that. Besides, I’ve got some other interesting scenarios to work through, which I’ll hopefully be sharing before too long…