ACCESS project – Arctic Climate Change, Economy and Society

Greetings from stormy Bugøynes ‘Havet (‘ocean’ – norweg.) is giving and taking’.  Many people in the coastal area refer to ‘giving and taking’ properties of seawater. The coastal village lives from the sea – cod/salmon/crab fishing, ‘Arctic’ tourism. The King crab, introduced to the Barents Sea from the North Pacific Ocean the 1960s by Soviet …

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The cradle of fly-in/fly-out reindeer herding in Europe: greetings from Khongurei

In many works on reindeer herding Komi people are considered as innovators who made reindeer herding not only a way of life but a profitable economy. One innovation that they did in the small village of Khongurei (see my fieldwork blog stephandudeck.wordpress.com) Nenets Autonomous Okrug, European Russian North, turned out to be rather counter-productive in …

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Murmansk region fieldwork oral history

Nina Meschtyb, postdoc research in our ORHELIA project, shares the following impressions from her fieldtrip Privet from Murmansk region. It is not very hot here – around 3-7 degree, but warm water was already switched off at houses for the summer period.  I started my trip from Murmansk. The bus arrived late in the evening, …

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Kings, predators and research on the northern top of Europe

Greetings from Bugøyfjord and Varanger fjord. I am now in Bugoynes (Pykeijä - fin.), in ‘pikku Suomi’ (little Finland). It is a fishing community with nearly 230 inhabitants. Almost everybody here speaks Finnish. The village is small, but several activities are going on here. There are actively operating factories (King crab farm, fish/reindeer meat processing …

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Travelling solo in the field isn’t being brave

The fieldwork is the most exciting part of our research. It is very challenging, everything is hard to plan, but it is adventurous, full of surprises, interesting meetings and conversations. For my field research on anthropology of seawater I meet, talk and listen, listen and talk to such a different people.Yesterday I was talking for …

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Greetings from the Arctic Ocean coast

Greetings from the Arctic Ocean coast and Gunnarsfjorden, Sandfjord, Skitten fjord, Sör fjord, Ifjord and all these beautiful places around Nordkinn peninsula. In the museum guide in Gamvik you can read that according to medieval scholars, Finnmark was considered as Ultima Thule – the End of the World. Around 100 people, mainly pensioners are living …

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New gas and old worries in the Arctic – BBC radio Crossing continents

Florian Stammler took a group of the BBC to his field site in Yamal, West Siberia, for a programme on herders and the gas industry. It was a challenging trip where we had planned much more than could be achieved in the end, but the programme that you can listen here still highlights some of …

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