North Norwegian Research Articles

Experience and status of instrumented durability monitoring of concrete bridges in Norway

AbstractWithin the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, the use sensors of durability monitoring (potentials, corrosion rates, resistivity etc.) was first investigated during a research project on a North Norwegian bridge in the beginning of the 1990s. The knowledge earned from this initial test has been used to compile national recommendations shortly after. Still, durability sensors are seldom used on bridges in Norway today, apart from systems for cathodic protection where potential measurements are frequently executed. During the 1990s to 2020s, durability monitoring was several times applied in research projects and results show how sensors effectively can be used to assess corrosion and durability in concrete elements. To promote the use of durability sensors, the Norwegian Concrete Repair Association newly published a guideline on how to use, install and analyze durability monitoring systems.The paper summarized experience with the use of sensors for durability monitoring on Norwegian bridges and research projects. Today, there is an increasing demand for solutions allowing the automated monitoring for bridge safety and durability. The status and possible further applications of durability sensors on Norwegian bridges are briefly discussed at the end of the paper.

Playing With Fire Compounds: The Tonal Accents of Compounds in (North) Norwegian Preschoolers' Role-Play Register.

Prosodic features are some of the most salient features of dialect variation in Norway. It is therefore no wonder that the switch in prosodic systems is what is first recognized by caretakers and scholars when Norwegian children code-switch to something resembling the dialect of the capital (henceforth Urban East Norwegian, UEN) in role-play. With a focus on the system of lexical tonal accents, this paper investigates the spontaneous speech of North Norwegian children engaging in peer social role-play. By investigating F0 contours extracted from a corpus of spontaneous peer play, and comparing them with elicited baseline reference contours, this paper makes the case that children fail to apply the target tonal accent consistent with UEN in compounds in role-play, although the production of tonal accents otherwise seems to be phonetically target like UEN. Put in other words, they perform in accordance with UEN phonetics, but not UEN morpho-phonology.

Healthcare Professionals' Experiences with Rehabilitation Practices for Patients with Cognitive Impairment after Stroke in North Norway: A Qualitative Study.

Methods A focus group interview with clinicians, coordinators, and leaders involved in stroke survivors' rehabilitation trajectories was conducted. The group consisted of a strategic selection of participants with diverse professional backgrounds from specialist and primary healthcare services. The transcribed material was analyzed thematically using systematic text condensation based on an inductive, interpretive approach. Results We found that patients with mild and moderate cognitive impairment after stroke were characterized as a neglected group in rehabilitation services and that neglect was related to both structural and professional issues. First, neglect seemed partly related to the availability of existing healthcare services, which mainly followed up on physical challenges after stroke. Second, cognitive rehabilitation seemed to be less prioritized than other health services, and the established interdisciplinary municipality teams did not seem prepared to follow-up on cognitive issues. Finally, at a professional level, the study reveals the need for building competence in cognitive rehabilitation and having services available in the long run. Conclusion The study demonstrates the need to increase knowledge concerning cognitive rehabilitation and how rehabilitation trajectories and services should be organized to fulfil stroke survivors' and carers' long-term needs.

Centre–periphery contestation and the spatialization of Covid-19 discourse in Norway

ABSTRACT This paper examines how and why the Norwegian government’s early handling of the Covid-19 pandemic became constructed as a centre–periphery issue in public discourse. By analysing opinion pieces and editorials published in a North Norwegian regional newspaper during the first months of the outbreak, it identifies how a ‘northern peripherality’ discourse emerged and highlighted geographical, infrastructural and political peripheralization processes in response to a dispute over the legality and efficacy of local quarantine restrictions. The paper argues that through interdiscursive anchoring in long-standing political cleavages and associated grievances around centralizing reforms, and through co-optation of government narratives, the ‘northern peripherality’ discourse established a position of vulnerability from which to more legitimately problematize responses to the pandemic as a regional concern. The case empirically highlights the spatiality of social conflicts and protest movements, for example discussed in the emerging literature on geographies of Covid-19. Theoretically, the paper engages with the question of how events such as the pandemic become ‘meaningfully regional’ through processes of (regional) spatialization. It suggests, in conceptual terms, that approaching regions and the regional through horizontal and vertical relations moves past one-dimensional readings of regionalist contestation, emphasizes power-laden relations within and across regions, and avoids replicating a territorial/relational binary.

Environmental Change at Deep-Sea Sponge Habitats Over the Last Half Century: A Model Hindcast Study for the Age of Anthropogenic Climate Change

Deep-sea sponges inhabit multiple areas of the deep North Atlantic at depths below 250 m. Living in the deep ocean, where environmental properties below the permanent thermocline generally change slowly, they may not easily acclimatize to abrupt changes in the environment. Until now consistent monitoring timeseries of the environment at deep sea sponge habitats are missing. Therefore, long-term simulation with coupled bio-physical models can shed light on the changes in environmental conditions sponges are exposed to. To investigate the variability of North Atlantic sponge habitats for the past half century, the deep-sea conditions have been simulated with a 67-year model hindcast from 1948 to 2014. The hindcast was generated using the ocean general circulation model HYCOM, coupled to the biogeochemical model ECOSMO. The model was validated at known sponge habitats with available observations of hydrography and nutrients from the deep ocean to evaluate the biases, errors, and drift in the model. Knowing the biases and uncertainties we proceed to study the longer-term (monthly to multi-decadal) environmental variability at selected sponge habitats in the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean. On these timescales, these deep sponge habitats generally exhibit small variability in the water-mass properties. Three of the sponge habitats, the Flemish Cap, East Greenland Shelf and North Norwegian Shelf, had fluctuations of temperature and salinity in 4–6 year periods that indicate the dominance of different water masses during these periods. The fourth sponge habitat, the Reykjanes Ridge, showed a gradual warming of about 0.4°C over the simulation period. The flux of organic matter to the sea floor had a large interannual variability, that, compared to the 67-year mean, was larger than the variability of primary production in the surface waters. Lateral circulation is therefore likely an important control mechanism for the influx of organic material to the sponge habitats. Simulated oxygen varies interannually by less than 1.5 ml/l and none of the sponge habitats studied had oxygen concentrations below hypoxic levels. The present study establishes a baseline for the recent past deep conditions that future changes in deep sea conditions from observations and climate models can be evaluated against.

Saurbekken – a discussion of food subsistence strategies

The zooarchaeological material from the North Norwegian settlement mound known as Saurbekken is examined using the number of identified specimens. The aim is to gain knowledge about food subsistence strategies at the site, food subsistence strategies through the ages, and whether the settlement took part in the preparation and/or export of stockfish. Based on available material from Saurbekken, the main staple was fish from around AD 1000 to AD 1300, with a seeming change from fish during the last 50 years of settlement, towards an economy more predominantly based on mammals. Based on the evidence at hand, fish was an important part of the diet for the occupants as Saurbekken, but as the amount of material recovered from the excavation produced a small sample size, it was not possible to infer if the inhabitants partook in the stockfish industry.

Metabolomics-derived marker metabolites to characterize Phaeocystis pouchetii physiology in natural plankton communities

Phaeocystis pouchetii (Hariot) Lagerheim, 1893 regularly dominates phytoplankton blooms in higher latitudes spanning from the English Channel to the Arctic. Through zooplankton grazing and microbial activity, it is considered to be a key resource for the entire marine food web, but the actual relevance of biomass transfer to higher trophic levels is still under discussion. Cell physiology and algal nutritional state are suggested to be major factors controlling the observed variability in zooplankton grazing. However, no data have so far yielded insights into the metabolic state of Phaeocystis populations that would allow testing this hypothesis. Therefore, endometabolic markers of different growth phases were determined in laboratory batch cultures using comparative metabolomics and quantified in different phytoplankton blooms in the field. Metabolites, produced during exponential, early and late stationary growth of P. pouchetii, were profiled using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Then, metabolites were characterized that correlate with the growth phases using multivariate statistical analysis. Free amino acids characterized the exponential growth, whereas the early stationary phase was correlated with sugar alcohols, mono- and disaccharides. In the late stationary phase, free fatty acids, sterols and terpenes increased. These marker metabolites were then traced in Phaeocystis blooms during a cruise in the Barents Sea and North Norwegian fjords. About 50 endometabolites of P. pouchetii were detected in natural phytoplankton communities. Mannitol, scyllo-inositol, 24-methylcholesta-5,22-dien-3β-ol, and several free fatty acids were characteristic for Phaeocystis-dominated blooms but showed variability between them. Distinct metabolic profiles were detected in the nutrient-depleted community in the inner Porsangerfjord (< 0.5 µM NO3−, < 0.1 µM PO43−), with high relative amounts of free mono- and disaccharides indicative for a limited culture. This study thereby shows how the variable physiology of phytoplankton can alter the metabolic landscape of entire plankton communities.

Expressive Sibilant Retraction in North Norwegian: morpheme or ‘spoken gesture’?

North Norwegian has a contrast between /s/ and /ʂ/ that is neutralized in word-initial position before a consonant, and an optional process of Expressive Sibilant Retraction (ESR), which changes /s/ to [ʂ] in precisely the environment where the contrast is neutralized (Broch 1927). ESR appears ambiguous between a word formation process and a spoken gesture (Okrent 2002; Perlman et al. 2015). On the one hand, ESR exploits givens of phonological structure. On the other, treating it as a morphological process entails claiming that the spell-out of certain (“expressive”) morphemes may take place after phonological processes have applied, or that the realization of these morphemes takes precedence to phonological constraints. I argue that ESR is a communicative (i.e. non-linguistic, or post-linguistic) spoken gesture that nonetheless exploits the suspension of phonological generalizations in a way that directs attention to its iconic function. I describe the varied interpretations that ESR has depending on whether it indexes an action/event, object, or state/property, and propose that these share a common semantic core. This gesture-based account of ESR is offered as a possible model for “expressive phonology” (e.g. Diffloth 1979) in other languages.

The ships that headed north - an archaeological perspective

Information on ships that were used for the North Atlantic trade, mainly from Hamburg and Bremen, is scarce and, to date, has been completely derived from historical documents. This is problematic because the terms used for ship types do not represent technical definitions. As there is currently no direct archaeological evidence for the ships that headed north, finds of ships and ship timbers from other areas had been considered to offer a first glance into shipbuilding and the mechanisms of change in building methods. Two main building methods can be distinguished in the medieval period for sea-going and coastal craft: the bottom-based Bremen-type shipbuilding method and clinker shipbuilding methods. The new carvel shipbuilding method was established in the late fifteenth century in north-west Europe. The archaeological evidence shows that there was no immediate change over but that in many cases, there was instead a convergence to achieve flush carvel-built hulls. Considering the Bremen-type with its flat bottom and limited sailing abilities and the fact that the German merchants only started to participate in the North Atlantic trade in the late fifteenth century, the question arises of whether there were other technical issues that prevented them from this enterprise until they managed to gain the knowledge required to build ocean-going vessels that could withstand a journey of several weeks across the North Sea and Norwegian Sea.

Hyperammina grosserugosa, nom. nov., a replacement name for Hyperammina rugosa Verdenius and Van Hinte 1983

In 1983 one of us (JGV) in collaboration with J. Van Hinte described the new foraminiferal species Hyperammina rugosa from the Oligocene of DSDP Hole 345 in the Norwegian Sea. It was also reported from the Eocene at Site 346, Lower Miocene at Site 348, and the Oligocene-Miocene at Site 348 (Verdenius and Van Hinte 1983). The species Hyperammina rugosa was subsequently reported throughout the North Sea, Norwegian Sea, and Barents Sea region (Kaminski and Gradstein 2005). The species has been reported more recently from the Miocene of the Fram Strait region and the Central Arctic Ocean by Kaminski et al. (2005, 2009), from the Upper Cretaceous (Santonian–Campanian) of the southern Norwegian Sea by Setoyama and Kaminski (2015), and from the Upper Cretaceous to Paleogene of the Outer Carpathian region by Bindiu et al. (2019) and by Bubik (2019).

Variasjon i praksis? Sammenføyingsteknikk – og materiale i nordnorske jernalderbåter.

Variation in practice? Joining-techniques in North Norwegian iron age boatsThe iron age burial custom where individuals are placed in seafaring vessels has traditionally been associated with large ships or smaller clinker build boats, such as the famous Oseberg ship found in Norway or the Nydam boat from Denmark. The overall impression of boats from this period have thus been that most of the vessels were constructed and joined with iron rivets consisting of a square nail and a dish shaped washer called a rove. A closer study of archaeological remains from boat burials in Northern Norway has revealed that this might not have been the case. By investigating the number and location of the rivets within the burial, several boats appear not to have been purely “clinker built”, but also fastened by a so called “sewing technique”, traditionally associated with older or Sami boatbuilding traditions. In addition, one of the newly found boat burials from Hillesøy in Troms county contained a boat completely lacking iron rivets. The main result of detailed comparison of all Iron Age boat burials from Northern Norway is exemplified by a selection of boats demonstrating varied use of joining-techniques. Furthermore, this article explores the contextual setting of these boats, arguing that the chosen boatbuilding techniques affected the functional aspects of the vessels and is thus related to their maritime activities.

Correlation of the Upper Oligocene–Miocene deltaic to shelfal succession onshore Denmark with similar deposits in the northern North Sea and Norwegian Sea shelf based on Sr isotope-, bio- and seismic stratigraphy—a review

Correlation of the Upper Oligocene–Miocene deltaic to shelfal succession onshore Denmark with similar deposits in the northern North Sea and Norwegian Sea shelf based on Sr isotope-, bio- and seismic stratigraphy—a review

Advection of Mesozooplankton Into the Northern Svalbard Shelf Region

The northern Svalbard shelf region is part of the Atlantic advective contiguous domain along which nutrients, phyto- and mesozooplankton are advected with Atlantic Water from the Norwegian Sea along the Norwegian shelf bream and into the Arctic Ocean. By applying the SINMOD model we investigated how much mesozooplankton is advected into the northern Svalbard shelf region. We also compare this supply with the local mesozooplankton production. To achieve this, we selected a box north of Svalbard and calculated the in- and outflux of Atlantic Calanus finmarchicus and Arctic C. glacialis. The average biomass inside the box ranged between 0.5 to 3.0 g C m-2 in March and August, respectively. Annually 18.8 g C m-2 of advected (and locally produced) mesozooplankton would be available for predators inside the box before it is advected out again. The advection of mesozooplankton is about 12 times bigger than the average biomass within the box, implying that grazing upon mesozooplankton in the Atlantic advective contiguous domain is greatly advantageous for pelagic predators. It could represent an important food source for fish and whales in the pelagic. It is suggested that the mesozooplankton encountered on the shelf north of Svalbard derives from populations along the North Norwegian shelf break, in some years as far south than the Lofoten/Vesteralen region. This illustrates the extent and significance of the Atlantic advective contiguous domain for the ecosystems of the European shelf of the Arctic Ocean that depend on feed supply and are thus presumably net-heterotrophic.

From Free-Text to Structure in Electronic Patient Records.

We report from the initial steps of a collaboration project between two post-doctoral projects, both using a qualitative action research approach to address challenges related to shifting from a free text to a structured EPR system constituting important preconditions for establishing advanced decision support and reuse of healthcare data. We have started to explore three areas that may influence this process related to: 1) Legislative challenges of getting access to all relevant healthcare data. 2) Challenges of exchanging data between silo systems and open platform systems. 3) Replacing a free text silo EPR with an open platform system - and the practical challenges of defining the content of the context sensitive structured EPR. Hence, we ask the following research questions: How to address challenges related to the shift from free text to structured EPR systems? How will the need for semantic interoperability between different EPRs influence the goal of advanced clinical decision support? Empirically, we draw on the regional FRESK program (2017-2022), in the North Norwegian Health Region, which includes implementing both a new regional open platform based EPR system, and a proprietary medical chart system.

Study on the Effect of Climate Change on Ship Responses Based on Nonlinear Simulations

Hull girder ultimate strength governs sagging and hogging failures, which is one of the most critical failure modes for a ship hull. The structural reliability analysis methodology has been used to develop common structural rules for tankers and bulk carriers. A linear model for bending moment in extreme weather with a nonlinear correction factor has been adopted in the analysis. It is difficult to conclude on the model uncertainty associated with nonlinear effects of bending moment as, until now, there are few studies addressing this topic. In this paper, the nonlinear effect on ship responses is analyzed, and the potential effect of climate change on ship responses is investigated with the improved three-dimensional (3D) Rankine Panel method using nonlinear wave input. The nonlinear wave input is generated by the higher-order spectral method (HOSM) wave model incorporating higher-order nonlinear effects, including nonlinear free-wave modulation as well as higher-order bound harmonics. The past and projected future wave climates of selected locations in the North Atlantic and North Norwegian Sea are considered.

The cancer may come back: experiencing and managing worries of relapse in a North Norwegian village after treatment

ABSTRACTLittle is known about how people living in the aftermath of cancer treatment experience and manage worries about possible signs of cancer relapse, not as an individual enterprise but as socially embedded management. One-year ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in a coastal village of under 3000 inhabitants in northern Norway. Ten villagers who had undergone cancer treatment from six months to five years earlier were the main informants. During fieldwork, the first author conducted qualitative, semi-structured monthly interviews with them, and participated in their everyday activities and relationships, including families, friends and co-villagers. In this article, we contemplate human emotions as arising in contexts of transactions, capable of creating social realities. By including this perspective, we highlight how people who recover from cancer construct and experience worry about possible relapse in relation to close family members, friends and co-villagers in the socially closely-knit and relatively isolated village. These emotional experiences emerge through relationships with others have communicative characteristics and take place in interaction with the social environment of their village. While informants attempt to protect family members by avoiding sharing worries with them, they express the need to share their worries within friendships. However, they experience both comfort and challenges in managing their worries in relation to acquaintances in the village. Overall, the study enhances understanding of the social embeddedness of emotions in everyday life, by revealing how worries of relapse of cancer configure and relate to various social contexts.

Revealing the full ocean migration of individual Atlantic salmon

BackgroundKnowledge of the complete horizontal migration and vertical movements of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) during the marine phase is important for understanding the link between individual processes and population recruitment. We studied the detailed migration behaviour of six post-spawned adult Atlantic salmon from a North Norwegian river, during the entire ocean migration, by using high-resolution light-based geolocation archival tags.ResultsThe fish performed long-distance migrations and utilized Arctic areas from the eastern Barents Sea, to areas of Jan Mayen Island, and north to Svalbard. Four of six individuals exhibited a strong fidelity towards Jan Mayen Island, particularly during winter, which may suggest that the ecological conditions in these waters may be important for overwintering. One fish displayed exclusive utilization of the Barents Sea, indicating that growth and survival of some individuals are entirely dependent on these waters. The fish displayed a pelagic behaviour and all individuals spent more than 83% of the time in the uppermost 10 m of the water column. There was a strong seasonal trend in diving intensity, with the number of dives increasing with day length, independent of individuals’ spatial distribution. Diving depth was positively correlated with the depth of the mixed layer.ConclusionsThe Atlantic salmon displayed large individual variation in horizontal migrations, utilizing different ocean areas north of the Arctic Circle. This means that, despite the overall fidelity towards northern latitudes, individuals from the same population may experience highly different ecological conditions, potentially contributing to within-population variation in growth and survival. The seasonal correlation between diving intensity and day length, and spatial correlation between diving depth and depth of the mixed layer, indicate that the overall depth use of the Atlantic salmon depends on both spatially independent seasonal factors, and dynamic oceanographic conditions that facilitate food aggregations. This is the first study of Atlantic salmon to present detailed information about individuals’ continuous horizontal migration and simultaneous vertical movements during the entire ocean migration, thus providing novel information on how habitat use change throughout the ocean residency.

Surplus Production and Marine Resource Use in the North Norwegian Iron Age

The coast of northern Norway was an important dried-cod production area during the Medieval period. During the Iron Age, marine resources had also played a vital role in the economy of the inhabitants in the region. The increase in marine harvesting post c.AD 600, as substantiated by archaeological finds, suggests that mass maritime goods, in addition to those goods of a prestigious character, were a significant part of the chiefly provisioning system of the Iron Age.

Approaching Health in Landscapes

AbstractChronic cancer patients (CCPs) pay attention and act in response to diverse bodily sensations they experience in everyday life after a cancer episode. Here, we analyse how North Norwegian CCPs use their familiar surroundings in an effort to counter bad mood, anxiety and symptoms of relapse and to strengthen their health. The core participants of the anthropological fieldwork over the course of one year were 10 CCPs from a small coastal village in northern Norway. By drawing on Tim Ingold’s understanding of taskscape, it is suggested that the participants after cancer treatment dwell in and engage with the surroundings of the village, including the core task of staying healthy. The participants are part of and embody the landscape through the temporality of taskscape, related to their ways of dealing with pain, worries and bodily sensations in everyday life.

Staging Cultural Identities as Political Performance: Hålogaland Teater, North Norwegian stage language and the emancipation of North Norwegian identities

When Hålogaland Teater was established in Tromsø in 1970 as Norway’s first regional theatre, the main goal was to create a professional company that would act as a people’s theatre of North Norway. In order to achieve this, the underlying principle of the theatre was that they should produce plays about the North Norwegian reality using a North Norwegian stage language and that these plays should be devised in close collaboration with the local population. Initially this caused a lot of controversy because the theatre challenged accepted standards of theatre-making both in terms of content and representation. For some it was utterly inconceivable that national and international classics such as Peer Gynt and Hamlet should be performed in a low-status North Norwegian dialect. It was simply perceived to be a sign of the deterioration of the arts! Despite heated debates and major conflicts, the artistic and political principles of Hålogaland Teater remained constant and today, almost fifty years later, both Shakespeare and Ibsen are performed in North Norwegian dialect without any protests and with great success. How was this development possible? And what has it meant for the northern region and its people? These are questions that I am exploring in this article with the aid of Bourdieu's “thinking tools”. The main argument is that Hålogaland Theatre has been central in the revaluation of Northern Norwegian identities and culture by elevating the low-status Northern Norwagian dialect to the status of official stage language.