Those of our readers who read Finnish may have seen this already, but this event may be of some wider relevance: https://www.ulapland.fi/events/Antropologi-Tim-Ingoldin-kenttamuistiinpanojen-luovutustilaisuus-Sevettijarven-koululla-/1980/ce07e180-f03c-44f9-9533-c3ddfa59d2f1

Tim Ingold returns his fieldnotes from the early 1970s back to the archive of the Skolt Sámi, who were resettled from the Petsamo area in Murmansk Oblast in the 1940s to the Sevettijärvi area in Northeast Finnish Lapland. Together with our colleague Sanna Valkonen and her SÁMIPOLITY project, they organise a returning event in the village school in Sevettijärvi.

Based on the fieldnotes that he returns today, Tim Ingold wrote his first monograph “The Skolt Lapps Today” (1976, Cambridge University Press). From there onward, he became one of the most influential Arctic Anthropologists. Like hardly any other scholar, he continues to inspire generations of anthropologists and theorists of humanity, with an infinite flow of thought and ideas, as evidenced in his most recent book “The Rise and Fall of Generation Now” (2024, Polity Press).

Arctic Anthropology all too easily becomes ‘provincial’ in the way that our findings remain too much in the realm of the Arctic only. Not only do we sometimes fail to communicate our scholarly results beyond the Arctic – many of us Arctic Anthropologists also miss out on opportunities to highlight the significance of field insights FROM THE NORTH to the rest of the world, for advancing our general understandings and theories of what it means to be a human in a certain environment. Especially in this field, human-environment relations, Tim Ingold has shown for decades what Arctic Anthropology can contribute to theory-making in our discipline as a whole.

Now he moves ahead again in the way he forges new partnerships with – probably the descendants of – his initial field research partners. The return of original field notes to the places where they were first taken is a wonderful process but not free of problems of course, and I wonder if these will be discussed on this occasion at all:

firstly, not everyone’s field notes may be worth returning, because there are of course not many scholars of the standing of a Tim Ingold. So first it might be worth checking if there is anything valuable for returning to the people at all. But then of course the question arises: who is going to assess what is worth returning and what is not? Would I myself be qualified to judge if people in the field would find my field notes rubbish or interesting?

Secondly, if I think about my own first field notes, I would be surprised if anyone in my field places would understand what I had written during my presence there: not only is it a mix of several languages and all hand-written, it is also not very well organised, as it was all written down as life was flowing. This means that for example every day there would be small bits and pieces about some topics repeatedly. A lot of the notes are written more for helping my own memory as someone who had been there and actually experienced life together with the people about whom these notes are.

So this raises a more theoretical question that can again be connected to Tim Ingold’s work: if we agree with his argument about the importance of experience, about the use of the human body as a ‘tool’ for the anthropologist’s field work, about methods beyond using interviews, our brain and cognition for finding out about things going on in the field – then how useful is it to read field notes without being able to experience the context that the author has been embedded in when he wrote these notes? In this respect the returning of the notes to the place where they have been taken is of course different than ‘just’ making these notes accessible for a wider audience. Because the notes actually return to the very context, to the locality and to the people that are at their centre. We may say that Sevettijärvi today and Sevettijärvi in the 1970s is not the same context anymore, and the people who read the notes in 2024 are not the same as those who were at their centre when they were written. In this respect the reader of the field notes, even if he/she lives in Sevettjärvi today, will not be able to experience fully what Tim Ingold described in these notes. However, an idea of the context can still unfold better for the ‘insider’ reader among the Skolt Sámi, who has intimate knowledge of the place, the culture, livelihood, the people and experience of living there. Outside readers would be missing all that, and may hardly be “Imagining for Real” (to use the name of another book by Tim Ingold) the Skolt Sámi life of the 1970s based on these writings. I would think that without that context even the history of the Skolt Sámi and their past life in Sevettijärvi might not emerge from these fieldnotes alone.

On the other hand: of course the notes by Tim Ingold – like all his other work – are for sure a treasurehouse of insights in general and beyond the Skolt Sámi, not least for showing the basis on which the most influential figure in Arctic Anthropology developed his first monograph. So even without that context the notes are an important document in the history of our discipline, because of the standing of the author. In this respect his field notes could be a wonderful example for mastering that most difficult intellectual process in our discipline: from a mess of impressions and experiences scribbled down on paper to an organised contribution to world anthropological theory. In this respect surely anyone who gets the honour of access to the notes will benefit tremendously. Therefore, congratulations to the Skolt Sámi community, to Tim Ingold and to Sanna Valkonen and her team for making such a meaningful return to the field possible!