Dammed – conversations against the current

What happens when we stop a river’s flow? What happens when we intervene, interrupt and disturb its course, to harness its powers in the name of renewable energy? And is a dammed river still a river?

Porjus hydropower plant, one of fifteen active hydropower plants placed along the Lule river. Together, they account for approximately 11 percent of the total Swedish electricity production. Photo: Nick Turner, Academic Film Lab

These questions were in focus of the BIOrdinary Summer School. For three years in a row, a research group at Stockholm University based at the Department of Social Anthropology, has organised these research schools as part of the research project BIOrdinary. People are brought together from different disciplines and career stages – from master’s students to senior researchers – to explore how biodiversity shifts are perceived, understood, and managed in ‘ordinary places’ as opposed to biodiversity-rich and protected nature hotspots.

The 2025 BIOrdinary Summer School was set in the vast but sparsely populated county of Norrbotten, a landscape deeply shaped by a century of hydropower expansion. During four long and bright midsummer days, the team travelled upstream along the 461-kilometre-long and heavily dammed Lule river to explore the long-term impacts of large-scale hydropower projects on biodiversity from a range of local perspectives.

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Text: Elin Sahlin