our university r&d department just shared an EU report, where Finland and Sweden lead their EU-internal rating for innovativeness.

Nice to see that the North leads the way there! We know that the Arctic is at the forefront when it comes to noticing the changing climate, and people in the North, particularly those who live in close contact with the environment round the year, have proved their impressive adaptability to these changing conditions. Good that this tendency also translates into a national level. If countries in the Arctic can lead innovations towards a better life on our planet, so should anthropology from and on the Arctic aim to lead the way for innovative research on social and cultural diversity and the ways how human social groups thrive in a changing environment!

Of course as anthropologists doing fieldwork with a focus on qualitative long-term participation in people’s life, we may be skeptical of the methods of these ratings and reports that base solely on statistical indicators such as numbers of university graduates, share of budgets invested in research, numbers of registered patents and designs, level of broadband internet penetration throughout the country, and the like. We are used to looking beyond these numbers and explain the deeper reasons for the ways in which societies and cultures innovate. Innovation is nothing new. Indigenous and local people in the Arctic have applied innovations as long as they lived in that environment, and continue to do so. We can explain the principles of such processes. Let’s live up to this expectation:)