This multidisciplinary conference builds on the first Island Dynamics conference on DARKNESS in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, in 2019, with focus on darkness as a figurative or symbolic and material or embodied aspect of the environment. In material culture, darkness as partial or complete absence of light informs approaches to technological design, architectural spaces, domestic and public environments, and natural ecosystems at land and sea. Mythological narratives may present darkness as void and chaos, something destructive but also as a state from which light may emerge.