In the European Arctic Midsummer nowadays marks mostly the start of the summer holidays. But at the roots of this big holiday, celebrated on or close to the longest day of the year, are pre-christian traditions. Asking from the spirits for a good harvest and for protection from evil forces were at the centre of …
Continue reading Arctic Midsummer – party time with pagan roots
We all know that the current situation with Russia and Ukraine is rapidly changing a lot of the ways and values on which we have been relying in the past decades for our everyday lives. But recently I was surprised when discussing the impacts with Karoliina Majuri, a reindeer herder and colleague here at Lapland …
Continue reading The influence of world politics in the forest of Northern Lapland
Many of you may have heard about the resistance of Sámi people against the Alta-Kautokeino hydroelectric dam in the 1970s-1980s. Even though the dam was built, the Sámi resistance including hunger strikes was hugely influential not only for indigenous rights movement among the Sámi, but also worldwide. In a way we can trace the impact …
Continue reading Indigenous People against industry: theatre performance
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 …
Our colleague Klemetti Näkkäläjärvi will give a lecture this Friday at 13.15 at the University of Lapland main building, with a title that would sound in english something like "rights and obligations of the Saami community". Klemetti served as the speaker of the Finnish Saami parliament and has a PhD in anthropology. The lecture is …
The University of Oulu is strengthening their Arctic profile and have announced several jobs. Let's hope they will hire anthropologists eagerly! It depends on how many good anthropologists will apply, so, dear colleagues - go for it! Tenure Track Positions in Arctic Interactions Research, University of Oulu, Finland Are you the new generation of premier …
Continue reading Job for Arctic Anthropologists in Europe? Oulu
The team of the joint Finnish-Russian project studying well-being among youth in Arctic industrial cities (WOLLIE) was invited to participate in the circumpolar study on Arctic Youth and sustainable futures, headed Joan Nymard Larsen, and the Arctic Human Development Report and Arctic Social Indicators editors team. At a meeting in Stockholm in the beautiful building …
Continue reading Arctic Youth well-being project participating in circumpolar comparison
This speech was given in November, 10, 2016 in Salekhard (Yamal, Western Siberia) during International Symposium "Preventing the dissemination of infectious animal diseases on climate change". Among all presentations in this presentation discusses different aspects of work with reindeer, it gives opinion of reindeer herders about the future of the reindeer husbandry in Yamal, which …
The saga about the Northern migrant route for asylum seekers wishing to reach a European country recently got a new turn: Since April 2016 the Russian-Finnish border in Lapland is closed for third-country citizens. The international staff of researchers at the Arctic Centre in Rovaniemi including me personally (a Swiss-Italian citizen) are deeply concerned by the …
A - what I would like to call a historical - decision was taken by the Supreme Administrative Court in Sweden at the end of February this year (source: The Supreme Administrative Court (SAC), case 2047-14). It is a decision made in a mining case concerning extraction of minerals in mid-Sweden, and since the decision was …
Arctic Anthropology 