Today I continue fieldwork reports from the ORHELIA fieldwork in the Lena Delta in cooperation with Yakutsk University (NEFU). During our first walk through the village of Bykov Mys we found out about the great proud but also sad history in Soviet times. Completely unexpected for us was the news of extensive Finnish resettlement to …
Continue reading Finnish, Lithuanian and local resettlers in the 1940s to the Lena Delta
From Tiksi you go another 50 km by motor boat to the village of Cape Bykov (Bykov Mys), where 500 people engage at 72 degrees northern latitude and harsh climate engage in coastal fishing all over the Lena River Delta. Today the only still remaining proper kolkhoz (cooperative enterprise) in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) is …
Until last year it used to be very easy to get to this fieldsite in the Lena River Delta, because direct flights from Moscow brought you to Tiksi in 6 hours. But last year the Russian army who used to run the airbase in Tiksi closed it, and shipped out all the security equipment, so …
Continue reading New field site in East Siberia, Lena Delta and Tiksi
The Orhelia researchers in the anthropology research team are having an intensive fieldwork season. We collect material that allows us to compare how the inhabitants of Eurasia's Arctic shoreline were affected by and respond to different state policies designed in capital cities by governments that are very far from the centres of life of our …
Continue reading Oral History of the Arctic – along the shores of the ocean
As a part of our advanced course on the anthropological study of resources in the North we screen a rare film tomorrow Thursday, 18 April at 16:30 in the Arctic Centre in Rovaniemi, in the POLARIUM room. Kultajoki - Gold River is a careful portrait of several individual characters who found their dedication in small …
For those interested, the Russian Indigenous Peoples Association (RAIPON) got a new president a week ago, at a very important time in the organisation's biography, because it had been closed down for formal reasons by Russian authorities late last year. Now elections for the presidency had been held in Salekhard, the capital of my prime …
Continue reading RAIPON indigenous peoples association new president
We are honoured and pleased to have Julie Cruikshank for the better part of the first week of April with us here in Rovaniemi. It won't pay enough respect to her fame to introduce her here briefly. There is enough good praise for her work in the net, most recently through the 2012 Clio award …
Continue reading ‘Are glaciers ‘good to think with? – Julie Cruikshank in Rovaniemi
Arctic Anthropology 