As the nation of Norway now approaches its millennial celebration, there is a need for new stories about and from the North, a need to uplift, celebrate, and build community, a need for alternative arenas for knowledge production, insight, and education. Is the story of Tore Hund irrelevant for today's North? Or is it, on the contrary, that the Viking chieftain with his Sami magic coats is more relevant than ever?

New North Academy is all in one; a conference, a performance, and a community. It asks which stories we tell, what we choose to celebrate, and why.

New North Academy plows through the landscape of narratives that together form our conceptions of the North, to tear down and excavate, clear and mess up, plow and build. Behind the controls sit not politicians, principals, or directors, but the local, free-thinking, northern artist and researcher.

The Canadian researcher Daniel Chartier refers to the "idea of the North" as an imaginary landscape that creates space to reflect on the relationship between locality and imagination: Fantasies about the North have existed in literature and art for centuries. Depictions of desolate landscapes, almost without people and animals, have been prevailing.

The repetitions of dreamlike images of a place beyond human existence help to cement a narrative about the North that does not harmonize with reality. At the New North Academy, we are interested in thinking, investigating, and making community - in today's multicultural and multilingual northern reality.

New North Academy emerges from the artistic research project 1001 North at the University of Tromsø, embodying various perspectives on northernness in the circumpolar area. The project is led by Hilde Blix, Geir Davidsen, Kristina Junttila, Joar Nango, and Amund Sjølie Sveen.