It all started with a group project during the National Science Week in Norway in the autumn of 2012, when the idea of a scientists-on-tour event was first aired. Fast-forward to today, and there’s no doubt that this was a great idea.
By: Helge M Markusson // The Fram Centre
Forskerne kommer! (“The scientists are coming!”) has become an annual outreach event mounted by the Fram Centre during the National Science Week. Scientists and disseminators from the Centre’s member institutions tour Norway to explain what they are currently working on.
The target audience is young people aged 14–19, but we also engage with adults who are interested in learning more. Since the project launch in 2013, a total of some 40 scientists have visited 31 different locations in Nordland, Troms, and Finnmark, reaching an audience of almost 14 000.
Environmental chemist Linda Hansen has participated four times. She is a senior researcher at NILU, an institute dedicated to climate and environmental research.
“The main thing for me is that we get out of our premises in Tromsø and engage pupils at other locations in northernmost Norway. A lot of exciting research gets done outside the universities, and it’s important to talk to people about that as well. Besides, practice makes perfect, and we get better at science outreach by actually talking and using figures rather than just reading aloud from a list of bulleted items. Being on tour in autumn can be magical. The scenery is stunning, and maybe you’ll get to places you’ve never been before.”
The Fram Centre is responsible for arranging the tour in cooperation with regional business centres and lower and upper secondary schools. This year, the scientists visited Alta, Nordreisa, Storfjord, Narvik, Bardufoss, and Tromsø.
Torill Blix is a postdoctoral researcher at the NORCE research institute, and joined the tour for the first time in 2024. The topic of her presentation was gene editing in animals.
“For me, the tour was rewarding because meeting young people face-to-face in their own home environment is an important factor in effective science outreach. Also, I believe that the interaction between us scientists and organisers, schools, teachers, and especially students, forges stronger community links in northern Norway—across disciplines, generations, and across municipal and county borders,” says Blix.
The theme for National Science Week in 2024 was “Health”. How energy drinks affect the body ties in well, and that was the focus for Rasmus Dahl Jakobsen, senior lecturer at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway.
“I found it incredibly rewarding to meet so many students with different backgrounds and skills,” says Jakobsen. “Many of them are into it, and some aren’t, and that’s all part of the charm. But it’s just so great when you sense you’re getting your message through to those young audiences. Young minds are the future, and it’s crucial to be able to get them engaged them in research, so we can continue to advance science and society.”
Researcher Ole Einar Tveito of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, who also joined the tour, adds: “For a scientist, it’s highly instructive to prepare presentations and come up with stories to appeal to the youngsters who are the main target audience for this tour.”
“We have to take a different approach to the content than we would for adult, and typically more academic, audiences. My best take-away from the tour was the insight I gained from the three other speakers; not just the pure facts, but how they gave their presentations. It was thrilling to realise that as the tour progressed, we were coming together as a group in that we were able to interconnect our presentations, and refer to each other’s research,” says Tveito.
