Ten thousand years under the ground

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Slettnes on the island of Sørøya in Finnmark is one of many hundreds of small settlements along the coast that were abandoned in the 1960s and 1970s. Around 1990, the then Statoil (now Equinor) had plans to level the entire place and build a gigantic facility for the onshore landing, processing, and shipping of gas from the Snøhvit field. As part of the preparations, archaeological excavations were carried out, and the archaeologists discovered remains of some of Norway’s oldest settlements — dating back approximately 10,000 years. The film follows the archaeologists and the people who own houses at Slettnes at a time when it was still uncertain whether the demolition plans would be carried out. We also follow processes and pipelines through time-lapse footage and reflect imaginatively on our relationship to time. (Later, the Slettnes project was put on hold, and the gas facility was instead built on Melkøya outside Hammerfest.)