The
Alta controversy refers to a political controversy in
NorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
in the late 1970s and early 1980s concerning the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in the
Alta riverThe river Altaelva has carved out one of the largest canyons in Europe on its way from the High Plateau of Finnmarksvidda down to the Altafjord. It lies in the municipality of Alta in Finnmark county, Norway. It is the site of a controversial hydroelectric power plant. The river is one of the best...
in
Finnmarkor Finnmárku is a county in the extreme northeast of Norway. By land it borders Troms county to the west, Finland to the south and Russia to the east, and by water, the Norwegian Sea to the northwest, and the Barents Sea to the north and northeast.The county was formerly known as Finmarkens...
, Northern Norway.
The background for the controversy was a published plan by the
Norwegian Water Resources and Energy DirectorateThe Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate is a Norwegian government agency established in 1921. It is under the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and regulates the country's water resources and energy supply. Its mandate includes contingency planning for floods, serving as a centre of...
(NVE) that called for the construction of a dam and hydroelectric power plant that would create an artificial lake and inundate the
SamiThe Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, are one of the indigenous people of northern Europe inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia but also in the border area between south and middle Sweden...
village of
MázeMasi is a village in Kautokeino municipality in Finnmark, Norway....
.
The
Alta controversy refers to a political controversy in
NorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
in the late 1970s and early 1980s concerning the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in the
Alta riverThe river Altaelva has carved out one of the largest canyons in Europe on its way from the High Plateau of Finnmarksvidda down to the Altafjord. It lies in the municipality of Alta in Finnmark county, Norway. It is the site of a controversial hydroelectric power plant. The river is one of the best...
in
Finnmarkor Finnmárku is a county in the extreme northeast of Norway. By land it borders Troms county to the west, Finland to the south and Russia to the east, and by water, the Norwegian Sea to the northwest, and the Barents Sea to the north and northeast.The county was formerly known as Finmarkens...
, Northern Norway.
Key events
The background for the controversy was a published plan by the
Norwegian Water Resources and Energy DirectorateThe Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate is a Norwegian government agency established in 1921. It is under the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and regulates the country's water resources and energy supply. Its mandate includes contingency planning for floods, serving as a centre of...
(NVE) that called for the construction of a dam and hydroelectric power plant that would create an artificial lake and inundate the
SamiThe Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, are one of the indigenous people of northern Europe inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia but also in the border area between south and middle Sweden...
village of
MázeMasi is a village in Kautokeino municipality in Finnmark, Norway....
. After the initial plan met political resistance, a less ambitious project was proposed that would cause less displacement of Sami residents and less disruption for
reindeerThe reindeer , also known as the caribou when wild in North America, is an Arctic and Subarctic-dwelling deer, widespread and numerous across the Arctic and Subarctic.- Distribution and habitat :...
migration and wild
salmonSalmon is the common name for several species of fish of the family Salmonidae. Several other fish in the family are called trout; the difference is often attributed to the migratory life of the salmon as compared to the residential behaviour of trout, a distinction that holds true for the Salmo...
fishing.
In 1978, the popular movement against development of the Alta-Kautokeino waterway (
Folkeaksjonen mot utbygging av Alta-KautokeinovassdragetFolkeaksjonen mot utbygging av Alta-Kautokeinovassdraget was a Norwegian organisation created on July 12 1978 to work against the building of the Alta power station in the Alta River. The NGO organised the opposistion against the construction in the Alta controversy, and had at the most 20,000...
) was founded, creating an organizational platform for first opposing and then resisting construction work. This group and others filed for an injunction in Norwegian courts against the Norwegian government to prevent construction from beginning.
In the fall of 1979, as construction was ready to start, protesters performed two acts of
civil disobedienceCivil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government, or of an occupying power, without resorting to physical violence. It is one of the primary methods of nonviolent resistance...
: at the construction site itself at Stilla, activists sat down on the ground and blocked the machines, and at the same time, Sami activists began a
hunger strikeA hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
outside the Norwegian parliament.
Documents that have since been declassified, show that the government planned to use military forces as logistical support for police authorities in their efforts to stop the protests.
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article1280217.ece
The prime minister at the time,
Odvar Nordliis a Norwegian politician from the Labour Party. He was Prime Minister of Norway from 1976 to 1981.Nordli grew up in Tangen in Stange, Hedmark. After World War II he served in the Independent Norwegian Brigade Group in Germany, part of the Allied forces occupying post-war Germany...
, pre-empted such an escalation by promising a review of the parliament's decision, but the Norwegian parliament subsequently confirmed its decision to dam the river. More than one thousand protesters chained themselves to the site when the work started again in January 1981. The police responded with large forces; at one point 10% of all Norwegian police officers were stationed in Alta (during which time they were quartered in a cruise ship). The protesters were forcibly removed by police.
For the first time since World War II, Norwegians were arrested and charged with violating laws against rioting. The central organizations for the Sami people discontinued all cooperation with the Norwegian government. Two Sami women even travelled to Rome to petition the Pope.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government in early 1982, at which point organized opposition to the power plant ceased, and the power plant was built.
Legacy
As the first serious political upheaval since the
debate about Norwegian EC membershipA referendum on whether Norway should join the European Community was held on 25 September 1972. After a long period of heated debate, the "No" side won with 53.5 per cent of the vote. Prime Minister Trygve Bratteli resigned as a result of the defeat...
in 1972, the Alta controversy was important in several ways:
- It put the rights of the Sami as an indigenous people with distinct rights over the lands in Northern Norway, onto the national political agenda. This process reached a key milestone in 2005, when the Finnmark Act
The Finnmark Act transferred about 95% of the area in the Finnmark county in Norway to the inhabitants of Finnmark. This area is managed by the Finnmark Estate agency....
was passed. It is considered that though the Sami lost the battle over this particular issue, they made important long-term gains.
- It unified formerly disparate environmental groups with respect to a common cause.
- Revived Sami interest in their culture and rolled back efforts of the Norwegian government's Norwegianization
Norwegianization is a term used to described the official government policy carried out by the Norwegian government against the Sami and later the Kven people of northern Norway to assimilate non-Norwegian speaking native populations into an ethnically and culturally uniform Norwegian population...
policy.
- It raised for the first time in the modern era actions of civil disobedience, and the potential of violence as a political tool in Norway.