Yale Undergraduates Discover the Art of the Arctic in Fully Funded Trip to Norway

In October, twelve Yale students and their professors embarked on a unique academic journey that blended classroom learning with firsthand exploration: a week-long trip to Norway to experience Arctic art, culture, and landscapes, funded by the MacMillan Center’s new Course Travel Abroad grant. The trip gave students the opportunity both to interact with the art and its subjects firsthand and to bring their individual interests to the conversation.

Organized as a core component of the “Art and the Arctic” course co-taught this fall by Professor Molly Brunson and PhD student Emily Cox, the itinerary included stops in Tromsø and Oslo, where students explored the Arctic, from fjord cruises and aurora chases to museums filled with Sámi art and nineteenth-century Scandinavian paintings.

The course explores a moment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the polar landscape became a subject of public fascination, explained Cox, a Yale PhD student in History of Art. “From the race to the North Pole to competition for newly discovered resources, artists drew inspiration from a contested landscape that became a grab-bag for European fantasies,” Cox said. “The seminar asks how the Arctic took shape as an aesthetically contested ground.”

“So many of our artists and writers were obsessed with the question of place,” said Brunson, who is Associate Professor in Slavic Languages and Literatures, with a secondary appointment in History of Art. “What does the North look like, feel like, sound like? And why might this be differently important for local indigenous populations and for the scientists, colonizers, travelers, and explorers that flocked to the Arctic in the modern age?”

When MacMillan issued the call for proposals for the course travel grant, Brunson and Cox agreed that it presented a unique opportunity to teach this sense of place. They chose Norway so that they could visit significant collections of Sámi and Scandinavian art in Oslo and Tromsø, as well as witness firsthand the majesty of the fjords and northern lights captured in many works from the region.

Students pose with the Northern lights behind them in the morning sky. Photo by EF Wandering Owl.

Their journey began on October 15 in Tromsø, a Norwegian city north of the Arctic Circle known for its dramatic landscapes.

“The trip allowed us to tap into the spirit of adventure that dominates so much of the Arctic art from the last two centuries,” said Brunson, explaining that the group drove six hours in an all-night hunt for the northern lights, finally finding them at the border between Norway and Finland, and were treated with a bonfire, snow angels, and hot soup. They went on a cruise of the fjords, where some brave students also took a pre-dawn Arctic plunge.

These landscapes offered a backdrop that deepened the students’ understanding of the Arctic sublime—a recurring theme in the art and literature they had been studying. Seeing snow-covered fjords and Arctic wildlife helped students contextualize the ways artists like Caspar David Friedrich and Peder Balke depict the North as a space of awe and mystery.

Another central component of the trip was its focus on the art and culture of the Sámi, the indigenous people group inhabiting the region of Sápmi, which today encompasses the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Kola Peninsula in Russia. This focus challenged students to reconsider their assumptions about Indigenous aesthetics and Arctic history.

At the Nordnorsk Museum in Tromsø, students viewed an important collection of Sámi art and had an enlightening conversation about collecting and exhibiting with the senior curator; they also saw an exhibition that put the Navajo artist Ravon Chacon in conversation with local Sámi communities.

The group tours a special exhibition with the curator at the Nordnorsk Museum in Tromsø.
 

Later, at the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, the group encountered more Sámi art that is rarely shown elsewhere, among them, the work of contemporary Sámi artists Britta Marakatt-Laba, Synnøre Persen, and Máret Ánne Sara.

Art installations like Sara’s Pile o’Sápmi, a tapestry of two hundred reindeer skulls protesting the Norwegian government’s ongoing forced slaughter of reindeer belonging to indigenous herders, presented “a powerful model for us to think about the land politics of the circumpolar region,” Cox said.

“Particularly in the U.S., these are not subjects that we commonly think of in connection with the Arctic,” Molly Hill ’25 noted. “Yet they are intimately intertwined.”

For many students, seeing these artworks firsthand brought classroom discussions to life. “Everything I learned in the beginning of the semester became so much more applicable and real once we were able to experience the art in person,” Roxanne Shaviro ’26 reflected.

Also in Oslo, students immersed themselves in the art of Scandinavian masters at the Nasjonalmuseet and delved into Arctic exploration history at the Fram Museum. “The trip provided so much context to what we were learning,” Shaviro said. “Experiential learning is often celebrated, and this trip really proved why to me. I felt a lot more invested in the material.”

Students also marveled at the parallels between historical depictions of Arctic spaces and their own experiences. “It has been really helpful to compare my vibrant memories with the texts and art that try to represent Arctic spaces,” Hill said.

Beyond its academic impact, the trip fostered a sense of camaraderie among the students. Spending time together in an unfamiliar environment brought them closer, and many credited the trip with forging lasting bonds between them.

“We benefitted not only from the interdisciplinary nature of the course, but the broad interdisciplinary and extracurricular interests of Yale College undergraduates,” Brunson said. Several students were avid birdwatchers and shared their expertise; others explained the unique geology of the region, linguistic questions, and matters of art and politics. One student, a NYTimes published crossworder, wrote an Arctic-themed puzzle for the flight over.

For some students, the experience opened new academic doors. For Shaviro, an environmental studies major, the trip bridged interests in Arctic systems and art. “I was able to gain a connection through art to something I have found so interesting in scientific papers,” Shaviro said. “I plan on taking more classes in the department, as History of Art and Environmental Studies relate in many ways I didn’t realize before.”

The class views Peder Balke paintings of the Arctic landscape at the Nordnorsk Museum in Tromsø.

Experiential learning opportunities have the power to bring a course to life, to put students in conversations with people around the world thinking about important questions, and to put them in direct contact with the subjects they have been studying, Brunson explained. “Beyond the course itself, fully funded study trips are equitable ways for Yale students, regardless of their financial circumstances, to experience new environments and communities, and to understand learning as an embodied and engaged process.”

As the semester has progressed, the trip has continued to shape students’ perspectives. Whether by enlightening their academic work or conveying a deeper appreciation for Arctic art and culture, the trip’s impact will resonate long after the students' return to campus.

Supplemental funding for the trip was provided by the Departments of the History of Art and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale.