by Florian Stammler, Asiarpa Paviasen and Tupaarnaq Kreutzmann-Kleist What connects dams, hydropower, green energy, agriculture, sheep farming and Inuit in Greenland? in the front the water supply pipe leading to the tiny turbine house of the micro-hydropower plant supplying two sheep farms in South Greenland Inuit are better known in the popular and anthropological literature …
Continue reading Inuit Innovation: grassroots hydropower green transition among sheep farmers
Some may remember our entry here with Erik Kielsen about the disastrous early snowfall and freezing event in South Greenland in late 2023. This summer fieldwork in the WIRE project there is on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of modern Inuit animal husbandry, and I am hosted at the Qorlortup Itinnera sheep farm, which …
Continue reading Fieldwork literally: the stony path of working in the field
The tradition of midsummer celebrations is widespread across many cultures, yet it is particularly strong among people of the northern and eastern Europe. Not an exception are Izhma Komi people, indigenous population of the North of the Komi Republic (Russia). These days, Izhma people live all across the Russian North; from the Kola Peninsula in …
Continue reading ‘Lud’ – midsummer celebration of Izhma Komi from the Russian North
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 …
Continue reading Fieldnotes returning to the field: Tim Ingold and the Skolt Sámi
Florian Stammler and Erik Kielsen Much has been written already about the losses of reindeer due to icing-over, or rain on snow events, among reindeer herders in Siberia and elsewhere. The climate seasonality is changing and this comes with its challenges in the Arctic for humans and animals alike. For example, in our research site …
Continue reading Extreme Arctic weather impacts for animal husbandry
Currently the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) has one of their worldwide working group meetings in Rovaniemi, the working group of environmental auditing (WGEA). At this meeting they have a specialised session on indigenous knowledge in auditing, to which they invited me as a keynote speaker. Not only was it hopefully a useful …
Continue reading Indigenous ways of knowing in auditing practice
Half of the People and the Land in the Arctic are in Russia. Quo Vadis Arctic Anthropology? Many of us who have worked for years, decades or their entire professional life in the Russian Arctic started wondering in early 2022 what will happen of the circumpolarity in Arctic Anthropology if we exclude the Russian Arctic …
Arctic Anthropology 