Arctic circles: Transprofessional networking and international governance

Abstract

Arctic-focused networking events are gaining prominence as sites of transnational and transprofessional governance. Central among such events is the Arctic Circle Assembly, an annual conference that takes place in Reykjavik in October. This paper uses Arctic conferences in general and the Arctic Circle Assembly in particular to examine transnational and transprofessional knowledge-creation, a process that requires regular interaction across national and professional boundaries. Conceptually, the paper draws on political geography, international relations, and anthropology to investigate interaction, socialization, and sociability in international governance. Empirically and methodologically, it combines participant observation at eight major Arctic meetings in 2022-25 with over thirty in-person interviews with those who organize and attend such events. My principal focus is not on the big picture of the meetings’ goals but on the small details of their social milieu. I seek to give a ‘peopled' or ethnographic account of the events to foreground the social workings of transprofessional interaction. The question to ask is not only how Arctic networks work and how they matter but also how the Arctic networking events work and how they matter. Beyond the Arctic, the paper advances our understanding of the spaces and practices of international governance.

Introduction: “Everyone wants an Arctic meeting these days”

The Arctic is the subject of intensifying transnational networking. The events at which and through which this happens have become more numerous, more sizeable, and more diverse over the last decade. Diversity means not only national or demographic markers but also professional fields: key Arctic events involve academics, businesspeople, and a wide range of non-profit groups in addition to diplomats and other civil servants as well as local and national elected officials. The networks, sites, and fields of Arctic governance are transnational and transprofessional: the mingling of multiple national and professional knowledges and identities is their central feature. The largest annual meetings at this time are the Arctic Circle Assembly (Reykjavik), Arctic Frontiers (Tromsø), and the Arctic Encounter Symposium (Anchorage); the smaller but established regular events include Arctic Forum (Brussels), Arctic Spirit (Rovaniemi), and High North Dialogue (Bodø), among others. Many such events date back by only a decade or so (Kuus, 2023a). That event circuit is in addition to formal diplomatic meetings at the Arctic Council, academic meetings like the International Arctic Science Week, and the multitude of one-off or irregular, primarily national, or discipline-specific events around the world. The quote in the section title comes from a denizen of “the circuit” as it is often called among those who move in it: the comment indicates the pull of such settings for organizers and attendees alike.

The central node in this circuit is the Arctic Circle Assembly (ACA or the Assembly), held every October in Reykjavik. It is a hub of Arctic-related networking globally. The Assembly is organized by the Arctic Circle, an institution that defines itself as an “international platform with a Secretariat based in Iceland.” Initiated in 2013 by the President of Iceland Ólafur Ragnar Grimsson, the institution became a prominent brand in the creation of Arctic networks within few years. In addition to the Assembly, it organizes Arctic Circle Forums: events arranged by local actors but under the Arctic Circle branding umbrella. These have taken place in New Delhi (2025), Berlin (2024), Abu Dhabi (2023), Tokyo (2023), Shanghai (2019) Seoul (2018), Edinburgh (2017), and Singapore (2015), in addition to the expected locations in Arctic Council member states. ¹ Arctic Circle as an institution and the Arctic Circle Assembly as its central space exemplify a format of transnational and transprofessional knowledge creation that utilizes informal social ties in addition to, and possibly as much as, formal national, institutional or professional ones.

This paper uses Arctic conferences in general and the Arctic Circle Assembly in particular to investigate transnational and transprofessional networking in international governance. My focus is not on states, epistemic communities, international organizations or other such concerns of international relations (IR) theory; my focus is on the practices of transnational and transprofessional networking and socialization in the physical spaces of Arctic conferences. This is a more geographical and anthropological focus on how people create knowledge in situ. I argue that such physical spaces are essential and not incidental places of regional governance and we need to understand their set-up, milieu, and effects in greater color, texture, and detail. Although the empirical discussion accentuates the Arctic Circle Assembly, my argument is about Arctic events, socialization, and governance more broadly. Throughout the paper, the term “conference” refers to events that include academics but are not dominated by academics.

The paper draws theoretically on geographical and related research on diplomatic conferences and social fields. Much of this literature is situated in IR and focused on the theoretical concerns of that discipline. The work makes sophisticated arguments about international governance and policy, but the nitty-gritty of how these processes actually operate through human interaction in physical space remain in the shadow. The resulting broad-brushed narratives frame governance settings as generic ‘elite' spaces, obscure the social workings of these settings, and thereby hamper our understanding of agency (capacity to act) in international governance. By focusing on the social dynamics of Arctic conferences, the paper advances a more textured view of international governance. To give the reader a feel or a sense (as distinct from an idea) of the events, I draw primary material from two sources: (1) attendance, participation, and observation at eight international Arctic meetings in 2022-25, and (2) thirty-five formal interviews, carried out in the same time period at those events and at two national capitals with those who organize and attend the events. My method is quasi-ethnographic: although I attempt no traditional ethnography with its detailed descriptions of the settings, I observe the scene with an ethnographer’s curiosity about how others see their world. All primary material, including the interviews, is off the record and non-attributable: I share vignettes and quotes, but only insofar as I can retain the anonymity of my interlocutors. ² Methodologically, this is important for confidentiality: Arctic circles are small and anonymity is fundamental to fieldwork, especially fieldwork that probes social networks and hierarchies. Conceptually, this approach is necessary to avoid an overly nationality- or profession-based interpretation of the material. My object of analysis is a transnational and transprofessional social field and my focus is on the modes of work that transcend specifically national or professional viewpoints.

The rest of the argument proceeds in three steps. The next section situates the analysis in the existing interdisciplinary research on the role of networking events in international governance. The subsequent section focuses on Arctic meetings to explain why they matter conceptually and empirically beyond the Arctic. The third substantive section concentrates on the Arctic Circle Assembly as an example of a transprofessional site of knowledge and influence. I do not attempt a macro-level overview of the ACA or similar events because this has been done by others already (cf. Steinveg, 2023; Wilson, 2024). Instead, I attempt a more micro-level account of the Assembly as a socialization experience. I try to convey the event’s milieu of social as well as professional networking and its slightly festival-like—some would say circus-like—atmosphere. The overall argument thus moves from the big picture of networking through Arctic networking to one nodal space in such networking to examine networking practices in progressively closer detail. The concluding section stresses that events like ACA are integral parts of international governance and need to be studied in empirical (as well as theoretical) detail.

Side events: Governance through networking

Research on the boundary zones between government, business, academia, and non-profit worlds shows that social connections, as distinct from institutional ones, are central to how such zones operate. “It’s all about ties,” a well-connected think-tanker in Washington tells Christina Garsten (2013)—she means networks. Today, many such networks are expanding and interlocking at fast pace: the task is to understand how this happens and with what effects. Professional communities and their boundary zones require maintenance: they require reunions, assemblies, and meetings (Garsten and Sörbom, 2018: 65). In the Arctic, because the professional community of Arctic experts is geographically dispersed and rapidly expanding, such maintenance functions are especially important (Kuus, 2023b).

In all bureaucratic settings, meetings are not a distraction from real work: in many and maybe all such settings, meetings are the work. To understand policy and governance processes, we therefore need to take a keen interest in meeting spaces: in “exploring the boring” in Jen Sandler and Renita Thedvall’s (2017: 1) pithy phrasing. The highly scripted meetings in large rooms—the kinds at which issues seem to be avoided rather than addressed—are also possible entry-points into governance practice, and they are often the only entry-points available to academics. I use such entry-points to study more than one institution or a series of events. My focus is rather on a social field—a social space that situates its agents (Bourdieu, 1990).

In the boundary zones between state and non-state actors, the conceptual distance between transnational expert networks and the sovereign state is narrowing: the state is constituted through transnational connections. We are witnessing, Kim Moloney and Diane Stone (2019: 105) argue, “a weakened or at least re-configured administrative sovereignty,” which has “decentralized and delegated policy and its administration to multiple global governance actors.” In this realm, policy actors, including many from the private sector, influence not only international treaties and behaviors but also the administrative and policy possibilities within sovereign states. One result is the rise of “transnational administration”: a multi-actor and decentralized realm in which (1) the state is no longer the only progenitor of policy and (2) policy and its administration are “no longer products of exclusively public action” (ibid., 106, emphasis in original). In that realm, the boundaries between academia, politics, and business are “to some extent dissolving” (Stone, 2013). Understanding it requires that we analyze the practices through which national models of the state become inseparable from transnational institutions and practices. This includes investigating the socialization through which national experts become members of a kind of “international of establishments” (Dezalay and Garth 2011: 278, borrowing a term from Pierre Bourdieu). Arctic governance may be a particularly illuminating example of governance practices that are better understood in terms of ‘in-between’, ‘fuzzy’, or ‘interstitial’ realms rather than neat ‘levels’ of governance (Hansen-Magnusson and Gehrke, 2025; see also Kuus, 2023a).

Diplomacy is a quintessentially boundary-crossing and interstitial profession because it happens between different authorities, jurisdictions, cultures and so on (Constantinou, 2020: 5). The boundary-crossing is also true of international governance, which requires the expertise of multiple actors in addition to state diplomacies. There is both a new structure of opportunities for various ‘other' actors and a structural demand for their services (Madsen and Christensen, 2016: 8). To conceptualize how this new structure of opportunities affects diplomatic work, Costas Constantinou, Noe Cornago, and Fiona McConnell (2016: 2) coin the term “transprofessionalization” to analyze “the expanded diplomatic space and intensified pace of global interconnections and networks” (see also ibid.: 20–34; McConnell, 2017). ³ In the private sector, similarly blurry distinctions between commercial transactions and international governance operate at trade fairs (Leander, 2021: 308). Such fairs have become important sites of governance because they codify the rituals and norms of particular professional fields. In addition to fostering commercial transactions, trade fairs function to affirm a commodified commercial international order. In all these spheres, “everything is plural”: the stages, the juries, that aspirants (ibid: 310). The events function as sites of normativity, albeit ones that operate through interactions rather than statements (Garsten and Sörbom, 2018: 15). In a similar vein, Clifford Geertz (1978) highlights the flows of information rather than the transactions of goods at bazaars. At a bazaar, Geertz (ibid., p. 29) argues, the multiplicity of actors and agendas creates an atmosphere in which the key challenge for the participants (“the bazaaris” in his terminology) “is not balancing options but finding out what they are” (ibid., p. 30). Such a context requires and rewards flexibility. The term “transprofessionalization” enables me to highlight and examine such flexible boundary-crossing professional networks in Arctic governance. Beyond the Arctic, the term can be used to analyze the cross-boundary networks that increasingly characterize international governance settings (see Constantinou et al., 2016: 53).

The expanding body of work on Arctic conferences illustrates such new structures of opportunity. Situated largely in IR, it focuses on two such events: Arctic Frontiers and the Arctic Circle Assembly (cf. Steinveg, 2023; Wilson 2024). The Arctic Circle Assembly has been conceptualized as a bazaar (Depledge and Dodds, 2017), a social field (Kuus, 2023a), a gathering point of an epistemic community (Steinveg, 2023), and a platform for multiple actors to assert their Arctic identities and credentials (Wilson, 2024). ⁴ All of the framings accentuate the mixing of national, professional, political, and cultural agendas and identities. The knowledge and connections produced at such events transcend states as well as professions. We should not overplay this, it we should also not overlook it.

The question is not about the boundaries between national and international spheres or diplomats and activists, but about the processes through which national and international elites, long-standing networks and newly established ones, become interwoven. We need to examine how power is exercised through multiple shifting alliances between diverse actors and authorities (Garsten, 2013: 144). This requires that scholars and practitioners “move past their sector-specific foci and narrow disciplinary (and nation-focused) endeavours to create space for new disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological emphases in which the boundaries between domestic and global are neither finite nor clearly defined” (Moloney and Stone, 2019: 1).

The IR literature on Arctic conferences uses ‘space’ largely metaphorically: we learn little about where specifically such spaces are, how they work, and how they feel. This is partly because focusing on a ‘feel' or ‘sense' of the event is conceptually and methodologically risky: it does not fit into neat theoretical and disciplinary framings. The ill fit is particularly evident when one tries to understand the social and sociable atmosphere of such spaces. The over-reliance on the macro-dynamics and the resulting lack of attention to the meso and micro levels of analysis systematically downplays the complexities of human agency. “Far too often,” Ingrid Medby (2022: 2) observes, “analyses of Arctic relations attribute agency to an abstract institution or indeed state, instead of acknowledging the people behind the action. This, in turn, obfuscates political agency, dispersed beyond potential intervention and change.” To remedy this, we need to “people” our analysis of Arctic governance to show the complexities of political practice (ibid.; Medby, 2018, 2025). The task is partly methodological: the underlying methodological challenge is to be more open to noticing and analyzing sociable interactions outside formal business and without molding the empirical material into clear causal structures (ibid.; Kuus, 2023b). The effort here is to do that: to add to the literature on transnational governance by examining the physical spaces in which the networking actually unfolds. This would help us understand the ways in which Arctic regionalism is being constituted and reconstituted through networks of interaction (Väätänen and Zimmerbauer, 2020; see also Bertelsen, 2019; Knecht and Albert, 2022).

Globally, the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting is a prime example of such networking spaces. The meeting takes place every January in Davos, a resort town high in the Swiss Alps. The WEF, which organizes the Davos meetings, is a non-profit think-tank. It has no mandate from anyone and is not accountable to anyone. It was only in 2015 that the Swiss government recognized the Forum as an “International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation” (Garsten and Sörbom, 2018: 12). The central function of the WEF is to “create networks and communities across organizational boundaries” (ibid. 18). The founder of WEF Klaus Schwab tellingly describes the Davos meeting simply as “a response to a need.” The ‘need' in that comment is for off-the-record networking space (ibid.: 9). Managing Director of WEF Paul Richardson concurs. The meeting offers the side events and side spaces at which and in which, he remarks, “it is possible to say things that can’t be said at a top meeting” (Garsten and Sörbom, 2021: 541). People attend primarily for such side events, informal chats, and a kind of “decompression.”

Davos is a ‘by invitation' event: attendees are selected and screened by the organizers anew for each individual meeting. There is no public access. The event is highly stratified even among the attendees, with little access at the lowest level of entry (Garsten and Sörbom, 2018: 107–108). Within its parameters of exclusivity and stratification, Davos is a place of national and professional mixing. In 2011–13, about two fifths of the attendees were from business and another fifth were high-level civil servants (including EU officials): the rest being NGO representatives (16%), academics (13%), and representatives of the media (ibid.: 15). Because of the circles within circles that are created by the layering of access, the overall numbers do not indicate the actual mix in any specific part of the meeting. The stratification also creates different off-the-record spaces and their attendant images of exclusivity and safety. To foreground the key role of informal interactions at Davos, Garsten and Sörbom (2018: 32) conceptualize the meeting as an interstitial space, characterized by the informal rules of community and camaraderie and a low degree of formal hierarchy.

This line of theorizing has some utility in the study of Arctic governance. Instead of dismissing Davos and other such meetings as generic ‘elite' spaces, we need to understand their functions in more detail. “Perhaps it is in the interstices of the established international infrastructure of organizations,” Garsten and Sörbom (ibid.) argue, “that we find the resources, motivations, and capacity for social, political, and economic change.” Closer analyses of such spaces would improve our understanding of the practices and spaces that constitute “discretionary governance” and “governance by platform” (ibid.: 6).

The effort in this paper is to offer a close-up and open-ended examination of the interstitial spaces of Arctic conferences. I try to understand the transprofessional and transnational boundary spaces—the physical spaces and not only metaphorical ones—that facilitate networking, fluidity, decompression, and informal connections. Methodologically, I seek to neither valorize nor demonize the field: to wear my own identity lightly and to observe the scene with curiosity rather than judgment. I am attentive to the specificity of each meeting and the distinct social circles therein, and I avoid the kind of “denunciatory” (Gusterson, 2021: 248) tone that sometimes mars academic accounts of such settings.

“The ones you don’t know and don’t know you’d like to talk to”: The why and how of Arctic conferences

Any conference, a regular of the Arctic event circuit remarks, needs to facilitate interaction with three groups of people: “the ones you know and would like to talk to, […] the ones you do not know and would like to talk to, and the ones you don’t know and don’t know you’d like to talk to.” The third category “is becoming more important every year.” That group is difficult to analyze and yet vital for a nuanced understanding of Arctic governance. The question is about how serendipitous encounters are cultivated at Arctic meetings.

Because of the specificity of Arctic conditions, operating in the region requires specialized technical expertise. Such expertise cannot be imported from more southern latitudes; it requires the synthesis of Arctic-specific knowledge from multiple fields. In Arctic networks, an interviewee stresses, “it’s all about synthesis”: effectiveness requires not only the knowledge of any one field but also the capacity to synthesize claims from multiple fields. Such expertise in synthesis is both technical and social: it blends science, diplomacy, and business, and it requires good knowledge of the social networks of Arctic experts. It requires sociability in addition to profession-specific competence. “Because in the end,” an informant tells Philip Steinberg (2016: 183) “all the meetings we do, they’re fun meetings” (emphasis added). At an Arctic event, the discussion is not one in which scientists and policy-makers discuss matters from their own silos: it is, rather, one on which all parties leave ‘their’ silos and ‘their’ jargon (and thus their comfort zone) to communicate in a more open social space. Participating in that discussion requires both technical and social expertise: a deep knowledge of one’s specific sphere and an equally nuanced knowledge of the interests and agendas of many other actors. The group that wields such expertise can be called the Arcticians (Kuus, 2023b). Because the Arcticians’ expertise is social as well as technical, it is maintained, in part, through transnational and transprofessional interaction.

Expert networks are thus at the heart of Arctic governance. Faced with a peripheral status vis a vis national centers of power and prestige, Arctic actors have over the last three decades created their own centers and turned their peripheral location into a central one. That center is not one place or institution but a network of institutions and actors. As a result, agency in Arctic governance is “more widely distributed” than one might guess from institutional charts (Medby, 2022: 2). A long-time insider agrees. Knowledge creation about the Arctic used to be by the world for the Arctic, they note: now it is by the Arctic for the world.

The family metaphor comes up often in my interviews. Everyone recognizes that it cuts in two ways, to foster enduring social ties as well as a certain insularity. The person using the term is usually well aware of that double function: they use the metaphor to communicate both the value of close networks and the risk of insularity they pose (e.g., by using the gesture of scare quotes around the word). On the upside, local actors, such as the mayors of Arctic towns, use Arctic meetings to assert specifically local interests and priorities. Outsiders, including public officials in the ‘home' capital, have learned to take such networks seriously. Even the Harvards of this world, several interlocutors comment, have learned to wear their Harvardness lightly. Those who peddle southern generalities but lack humility and willingness to learn are tolerated but not respected. Asked about their advice to newcomers, one experienced professional replies thus: “Ask the questions before you offer your solution.” Another such person is more cutting. “First,” they say, “don’t explain the Arctic to the people of the Arctic” (The comment came at the heels of an event at which a fly-in dignitary had done just that). On the downside, that same person remarks: “We are very good at complimenting ourselves on how good we are [at cooperation]. I do not know how good we are including new people.” The personalized character of Arctic networks means that personal brands matter: ACA is closely linked to former President of Iceland Olafur Grimsson whereas AES is similarly linked to US Senator Lisa Murkowski and the event’s Founder and CEO Rachel Kallander. It also means that the individuals who understand the networks and command the respect of their fellow Arcticians can be highly effective regardless of their formal institutional location.

The centrality of local actors comes to the fore especially in indigenous networks. Diplomats, pundits, and businesspeople come and go, academic fashions wax and wane, but indigenous networks remain strong. The experienced players, regardless of their professional field, know that nothing is accomplished without the active consent and participation of indigenous groups in the actual communities in the Arctic. Even in the context of substantial socio-economic differences among Arctic communities—“there are really different Arctics,” an interviewee remarks on such differences—indigenous groups connect easily across borders (see also Steinveg, 2023: 99–100).

Each Arctic event has its own rationale and vibe: overgeneralization is counterproductive. The largely Europe-based literature on them tends to focus on the European events and neglect the third of the big three: the Arctic Encounter Symposium (AES), which takes place every spring in Anchorage. It is the AES though that is the place for US-based or US-related networking. “If you want to interact with the Americans,” a European diplomat notes at one such symposium—and every serious player needs to interact with the Americans—AES “by far the place to be.” It is worth attending, even in a relatively remote place like Anchorage, another attendee from Europe comments, because of the networking: one can see all key players in one place. One would “never” be able to replicate the quality of the contact by e-mails or phone calls. The regulars of the Arctic circuit tend to attend all three events annually. Although ACA is the biggest and most diverse of the events, in part because of its convenient location between Europe and North America, each meeting has its own niche, owing to its national and sponsorship background.

Transprofessionalism is a central feature of Arctic settings. The Arctic is like a Rubik's cube, a businessperson explains: when you change anything, you affect everything else. Everything is international, interdisciplinary, and inter-professional. Those who gravitate toward silos don’t stay in the Arctic. The ones who stay are ‘the wannabe diplomats’ who want to engage across difference. Scientists learn that it is not enough to state facts, businesspeople learn that it is not enough to state potential profits, diplomats learn that they need to coordinate their work well beyond the own ministry. Arctic networks teach one, an interviewee remarks, that the deep political reason behind many negotiations is the need for a long-term relationship: underneath the specifics of what is being negotiated is also the imperative to cultivate and maintain lasting relations. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when Arctic Council paused its full diplomatic-level meetings, conferences gained importance (Some formats restarted work in 2024 (Arctic Council, 2025). Although Arctic conferences’ circumpolar effectiveness has been limited because Russians are not present (Streinveg, Rottem, and Andreeva, 2023), participants from the remaining seven Arctic states use the conferences to maintain their networks. When Arctic cooperation returns to something resembling pre-2022 levels, a diplomat notes “it will be your network” that gives you the edge. On the one hand, then, “geopolitics has caught up” with Arctic cooperation, an interviewee comments. The increased politization of Arctic issues, in part because of the growing media spotlight on the region, has also made finding common ground more difficult. On the other hand, as the formal channels of communication do not work as well, there has been a certain transference of interactions from formal to informal settings.

The social field of Arctic conferences is porous and drafty: people move in and out as diplomatic postings, business opportunities, and research projects come and go. Given the intensifying interest in the region, even old-timers need to be alert to newcomers. One may be confident about who matters but not about who does not matter. Even those with formal institutional clout recognize the wisdom of including rather than excluding: in the context of rapid change, it is safer to be inclusive. To me as a newcomer, those experienced on the circuit seem more rather than less open than the less experienced folks. Among the Arcticians, several interviewees suggest, social hierarchy is relatively flat. Session attendance is more mixed than I would have guessed, with diplomats and businesspeople regularly attending the primarily academic sessions.

At all Arctic meetings, the gravitas of indigenous panels and participants is noticeable. It is not unusual to see high-ranking diplomats arrange their schedules around such panels (at which they appear to listen, insofar as I can discern from some rows away in the often darkened rooms). They have learned, I learn from interviews and conversations, that they need to grasp indigenous perspectives in order to have professional credibility in Arctic circles. As an informant of Beate Steinveg (2023: 100) puts it: “This is where the power of Indigenous peoples comes in. To hear from someone who lives there, and it is a part of who they are—it makes it hard to forget that speech. That is where the true value is.” The representatives of indigenous groups understand the value of socialization well. They network widely and they explicitly mentor their junior colleagues for transnational and transprofessional interaction. They also know that their presence lends gravitas to panels, and they use that knowledge skillfully. The influence of indigenous persons stems from their lived experience, one such person remarks. Indigenous people “inhabit the reality, not the fantasy” in the region: it is them who live with the actual conditions on the ground. It is easy for outsiders to “create stories to the heaven,” they continue: the indigenous participant sometimes needs to be “the adult in the room.” Although indigenous actors are not alone in recognizing that Arctic institutions need to perform a certain “adult education service for southerners,” they are the lead actors in that service.

“Hypermodern hygge” at Harpa: Attending the assembly

The Arctic Circle Assembly takes place in the same space every year: the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center in Reykjavik. Harpa is an architecturally stunning building perched on a peninsula and boasting spectacular views of the sea and the coastline from all foyers and some meeting rooms. Completed in 2011, its interior design facilitates interaction as it includes sitting spaces and multi-story sight-lines not present in most conference spaces. The building’s transparent glass façade provides the “hypermodern hygge backdrop” to “the chattering classes of the Arctic” gathering there (Bennett, 2019; see also Bennett, 2018, 2022). The beauty of the space comes up frequently in my conversations. Holding the Assembly at Harpa is “genius,” a regular attendee remarks: people associate the event with the light and the views from that building. If there is a non-human element to ACA, it is the space in which it takes place.

Transnational and transprofessional networking is the meeting’s reason for being. The first ACA took place only months after the Arctic Council had accepted six additional non-Arctic states as observers in May 2013. Offering space for non-Arctic actors and other newcomers to network in an Artic context but outside formal Artic Council settings has been the Assembly’s niche from early on: among the Arctic events, ACA draws the largest number of participants from non-Arctic states. ⁵ Attendance grew from about 1200 participants from 35 countries in 2013 to 2000 participants, from 70 countries, in 2018 (Steinveg, 2023: 42). Even during the pandemic, the 2021 assembly took place in person that October with 1400 (mostly unmasked) participants (Kuus, 2023b). ⁶ This testifies to the need for in-person networking even amidst the substantial inconveniences of pandemic-era travel. Attendance numbers have stabilized in the low to middle 2000s since, and this in the context of the “staggering loss” of half the Arctic as a result of Russians not attending. For the “motley crew” of policy-makers, scientists, entrepreneurs, indigenous representatives, and a wide range of civil servants, ACA remains central (Bennett, 2022). Flights and hotels are heavily booked for the event, and this in a city of “eye-watering” prices at any time (Bennett, 2018).

Arctic Circle identifies itself as a “platform.” This sets it apart from intergovernmental organizations and creates a certain family resemblance to WEF as another “platform” organization. Because if its global networking cache, ACA has been called Davos of the Arctic from early on. Similarly to the Davos meeting, the Assembly’s value lies in the creation and maintenance of social networks rather than any formal or executive power. Unlike Davos, ACA is an open event, accessible to all who register. Whereas Davos’ aura is based on exclusivity, ACA’s is based on openness. ⁷ What connects the two events is the key role of informal social connections; what the organizers have monetized is the need for transnational and transprofessional networking space.

The centrality of networking is the key theme in my interviews and conversations about ACA. The Assembly is “a circumpolar speed-dating event,” an attendee comments with an expression that mixes irony, affection, and exhaustion: you attend to see and be seen. It is a space of non-stop intense networking, another regular says with a similar expression. It’s like a “rollercoaster or a tumble-dryer” or some such thing: you enter and then somehow you exit, but you don’t always know how it happened. Because of the cacophony of the event, combined with the music, dance, and food performances as well as the nightly receptions, the event is also called the Arctic Circus (Bennett, 2018) and “an international Arctic roadshow” (Wilson, 2024). Mia Bennett’s (2022) title for her account of the ACA 2022—“A NATO admiral, Chinese diplomat, and Faroese metal band walk into a concert hall”—captures the vibe well.

There are multiple interlocking fields inside the main field. A plenary set in a large darkened concert hall to video introductions, stage music, and the like has a different atmosphere than a content-driven break-out session; a panel that draws diplomats feels distinct (by its measured and some would say bland tone) from one with mostly academic, NGO, or local government audience. The rhetoric from the large stage may be hype-driven, but (well-attended) break-out sessions may well feature pointed critiques of that very hype. Doctoral students attend in large numbers thanks to deeply discounted registration fees. A session involving investment and philanthropic interests—what might be called Big Money—is tucked away in a small suite of the five-star hotel next to Harpa and feels a world away from the academic discussions a building away. For the key players, most of the action is in small-group and private meetings as well as hallway chats rather than formal sessions.

In spring and summer 2024, Arctic Circle announced two new initiatives, both of which create smaller and more restricted meetings within the main meeting. One is the Arctic Circle Business Forum (Arctic Circle Secretariat, 2024b). It is designed as an additional layer of events, accessible only to those who register for the Forum. The event-within-event takes place at the five-star hotel next to Harpa, for a registration fee that is about a third higher than for the attendees at the ‘regular' assembly. ⁸ The Forum is designed for “connections, opportunities, and networking events”: the launch announcement stresses networking throughout. The other such event-within-event is the Polar Dialogue, a set of open and ‘by invitation’ events on science diplomacy within ACA. Its launch announcement traces the initiative to the Polar Summit, convened in late 2023 by President of France Emmanuel Macron in Paris. That summit showed, the announcement states, that “there exists a growing need to come together and discuss the Arctic, Antarctic, and Himalaya—Third Pole, as well as other ice-covered areas of the world, for the purpose of consultation and cooperation” (Arctic Circle Secretariat, 2024a). The ‘by invitation' Polar Dialogue sessions have a closer connection to interstate diplomacy and include more diplomats among the speakers and the audience. Some of them take place outside Harpa. At the same time, none of the events are monocultural in national or professional terms: there is always a mix of diplomats, academics, and NGO leaders.

The thread that connects both the Business Forum and the Polar Dialogue is the creation of circles within circles. How the new initiatives affect the rest of the assembly and whether they will enhance or hinder connectivity, curiosity, and creativity remains to be seen. Some of their attendees like the familiarity of the specialist settings, but others value the less organized spaces of the main meeting. In the context in which new contacts (with those “you don’t know you’d like to talk to”) are becoming more important, even well-connected individuals value the less predictable interactions of the main event. What is clear is that the Business Forum and the Polar Dialogue show ACA’s overall success as a networking space.

The cultural mixing across national and professional lines is built into the event. “We create the platform,” Grimsson said at the launch of Arctic Circle and later, “the participants create the dialogue.” Grimsson—and it is him who is widely credited with creating the platform and who is its singularly charismatic leader—also understood the importance of keeping the forum open. At the first Assembly in 2013, he laid out three rules for the new setting: the first is “a culture of open dialogue and informal style of deliberation,” the second is the “preeminent role of science and research in Arctic policy-making,” and the third is “the inclusion, representation, and respect for Arctic indigenous peoples” (Grimsson, 2013; see also Wilson, 2024). The first in particular may seem a meaningless generality, but is not so. ACA meetings are certainly scripted, but there is also formal time allotted to questions from the audience. Although questions are respectful, they are not necessarily fawning of the dignitaries: everyone on stage needs to be able to handle a hardball question—and face the applause that might accompany it. This creates an atmosphere that is more stimulating than is usually the case with screen-saturated ‘chats' on the stage—ones at which the moderator tends to give predictable questions and receive predictable answers. Even those weary of the hype value the organizers’ “assumption that people can interact intelligently.” Grimsson himself sets the tone at many a panel, moderating with flair as well as competence. ACA is indeed not dominated by any one national culture, an interviewee remarks: “it is dominated by one person.” It is that slight smile of irony and affection again: to the old hands, the scene is in many ways predictable, but it is also their professional family of sorts. ⁹

The civil services of Arctic states are well represented, across multiple ministries. There are local and national politicians, academics, businesspeople, and participants from the non-profit sector. Transversing all those spheres are the diplomats as professional networkers. Formal affiliations are not necessarily useful markets of professional boundaries given the extensive intersections of science, diplomacy, and business at multiple scales. ¹⁰ Those with long experience in any sector know most other such persons and interact with a quasi-diplomatic neutrality regardless of their own professional background. There is a growing group of participants in uniforms and the attendant group of people whose comportment indicates a military and defense background regardless of what they wear that day. The name tags feature the country in big letters but the institution is rather smaller ones: this blurs professional fields even as it marks national ones. Some wear their group identity lighter than others; many seem to enjoy being on the margins of their own comfort zones. In addition to the civil services, the universities located in the Arctic are highly visible. To me as a Canadian, the vibe feels vaguely Scandinavian, but not so to the Scandinavians: to them the atmosphere of speed and hype feels distinctly American. At ACA, too, as in other Arctic meetings, indigenous groups have a strong presence in both formal and informal interactions. Even the context of that largest and most cacophonic of the Arctic meetings, the gravitas of indigenous actors is unmistakable.

The event fosters both international and national networking. Arctic states send large groups of civil servants to the meeting and their embassies organize receptions to bring them together. In some ways, a civil servant from one such country comments, Arctic experts from large countries use the ACA to network among themselves. This starts on the flights to Reykjavik on the eve of the event and it continues till the return flights after the event. Even as a newbie, I recognize several Canadians (in some cases because I have seen their official profile photos) on the Toronto-Reykjavik flight on the eve of ACA 2023 and quickly get introduced to several more. The atmosphere at boarding is reunion-like, as my fellow travellers recognize others going to the same meeting: overhearing their banter reveals that I am surrounded by Canadian civil servants working on the Arctic. I see the same group again a few hours later, when the Canadian Ambassador to Iceland greets us all at a reception she hosts for the Canadian attendees of ACA. Such vignettes can be told of other flights to and from Reykjavik that week. For the observer states, too, their local embassies are actively involved in the networking activities.

Image management and the cultivation of sociability are central to the “seemingly haphazard but carefully choreographed” meeting (Bennett, 2022). The key asset traded at the assembly is intangible and often symbolic: information, visibility, reputation (see also Depledge and Dodds, 2017; Steinveg, 2023; Wilson, 2024). Photographers are everywhere and hundreds of photos are released of each of the meeting days. Videos of the event and the brand are ubiquitous at Harpa and online. Receptions are well-catered and lively. “It cost the organizers a fortune,” someone comments, sotto voce, on the simple wine that flows at receptions: the regulars are familiar with the price of alcohol in Iceland. There are food degustations, courtesy of trade associations. There is a plenary on Season IV of the Danish political drama Borgen because that season features a storyline about oil drilling near Greenland. The program announces a “mystery guest” on the panel and the audience is well amused when Thomas Winkler, Denmark’s Senior Arctic Official—its Ambassador to the Arctic—walks on stage as the last-minute stand-in for the star the audience had been hoping to see. Is diplomacy like it is portrayed in Borgen, Grimsson asks, or is it “more boring”? “I have been a diplomat for over thirty years,” Winkler replies amicably: “and I have never thought that diplomacy was boring.”

The usual professional and social frustrations are present at ACA as well: academics find the diplomats too general; businesspeople find the academics too technical; local government officials find the businesspeople too ignorant of local conditions—and diplomats seldom utter a critical comment on anyone. Big universities, big think-tanks, and big business are coming in, and “the little guys are being pushed out,” a regular attendee remarks. ‘By invitation' events are multiplying. The field appears more open to those well placed in it than to those in its outer circles. Many attendees are concerned about the fragmentation and stratification of the meeting, especially after the introduction of the Polar Dialogue and Business Forum in 2024. The growing presence of security interests is noticed by many and not necessarily appreciated by as many. There is considerable frustration about the absence of Russian scientists and NGO leaders: indigenous leaders are especially direct and articulate about the need for inclusion rather than exclusion. As usual, an interviewee comments, you learn a lot about an event by observing the money trail: who the sponsors are, what they pay for, and how they are represented at the meeting. Putting together such events is a balancing act: their organization is expensive and relies on sponsors, but the heavy influence of the sponsors can cause reputational damage to the event.

Conclusion: Arctic conferences as spaces of connection

This paper uses Arctic conferences in general and the ACA in particular to foreground transnational and transprofessional networking in regional governance. The preceding empirical sections accentuate the social facets of Arctic meetings and the ACA in particular: not the intellectual content of what is said but the social context in which it is said and heard. Transprofessionalism refers to the expanding space and intensifying pace of interactions and networks. It is less a space of presentations than of side events and private meetings. Focusing on such side events helps us understand the role of social interaction and sociability in international governance. Interaction in physical space is not a nice extra at Arctic meetings: it is an essential part of dialogue, compromise-building, and professional esprit de corps. The references to the fun, rollercoaster, or circus-like atmosphere of ACA and other Arctic meetings are analytically noteworthy because they tell us something about the social lives of Arctic expertise. This is especially important in the context of international tensions. Nobody thinks that events can substitute for formal diplomatic meetings, but many understand that informal communication is vital. It is now in particular, several interviewees point out, that the Arctic can serve as a laboratory of international cooperation: of connection and not only disconnection. Arctic meetings are especially important spaces of transprofessionalism in part because of the strong presence of indigenous groups.

This paper adds to the literature on Arctic and international governance by highlighting the importance of social networks and the contexts and spaces in which they are cultivated. The field of Arctic governance centers not on one meeting or several meetings, but on a diffuse set of interactions, including ad hoc ones, at the side events of such meetings. The most important connections—whether intellectual or social—often happen in coffee breaks rather than sessions, receptions rather than scheduled meetings. I accentuate nebulous things like milieu or ‘feel' to underscore the import of social dynamics that count but cannot be counted; that can be sensed but not fully described. Foregrounding such dynamics illustrates what transprofessionalism means in daily practice and how it can be cultivated.

Professional networks require maintenance, and those that cross national and professional boundaries—and thus habitual patterns of interaction—require more maintenance. For those not trained for such settings—whether NGO leaders, indigenous groups, or academics—transnational and transprofessional communication skills are learned over time and in practice. They are learned at specific events, in specific social situations. One question to ask is about the format of the meetings: their rules of access and engagement, their framing and marketing, and the money trails that underpin them. That question is an empirical one, and it requires sustained engagement with the physical spaces of governance. Methodologically, the paper underscores the need to study small and often ambiguous human interactions. Whereas the headlines about the events are about grand geopolitical tensions, the uses of the events are about small interpersonal interactions. ¹¹ Such uses, in their intricate patterns and textures, are accessible only marginally, slowly, and in in-person interaction.

To say that the ACA is a space of social networks is also to say that it is a space of human connection. To speak of connection is not to discount disconnection: Arctic cooperation does not undo power politics or power hierarchies, and Arctic meetings both undercut and bolster such hierarchies. To speak of connection is, rather, to foreground the transnational and transprofessional socialization that is difficult to theorize but is central to governance practice. Closer analysis of the informal connections and socialization at play—analyses that include the atmosphere of the event—help us understand the actual spaces of governance.

The Davos meeting, The Economist (2022) magazine comments, is “not useless.” The panel discussions therein “will not fix globalization, avert climate catastrophe or foster inclusive growth,” but the back-room chats outside the panels are even more important in the post-pandemic world. “Individually” the newspaper continues, such meetings are about corporate self-interest. Collectively “they can add up to something meaningful” [emphasis added]. Davos needs the world more than the worlds needs it, The Economist concludes, but “[t]hat isn’t to say there aren’t mutual benefits.” A similar point can be made about the Arctic Circle Assembly. That event will not, in itself, solve any problem, in the Arctic or beyond. Individually, the interactions at Harpa are about individual and institutional interests and ambitions. Collectively, however, they cultivate and maintain the professional and social networks that can add up to something meaningful. The Assembly needs the Arctic more than the Arctic needs the Assembly, but that isn’t to say there aren’t mutual benefits. The value of the event lies, in part, in its haphazard and ad hoc feel. Beyond the ACA, too, the connections fostered at Arctic meetings happen not despite of the tumble-dryer quality of such meetings but because of it. The question to ask is not only how Arctic networks work and how they matter but also how the spaces of Arctic networking events work and how they matter.