Our research on human animal relations, including past and present projects, such as the Finnish Academy sponsored Arctic Ark, which studied the specific genome of Arctic animal species and how human cultures influence it, as well as “WIRE – Fluid realities of the wild”, which studies the diversity of human relations to wild and to domestic animals in the Arctic in ways that encourage us to revisit ideas of the wild and the domestic in the first place
The first thing flying into Kangerlussuaq, Greenland reminds us that this is 'properly' Arctic. For most people who call the North home, the Arctic is further up North from where they live. But for the incomers, the Arctic is appealing! Usually we associate Inuit livelihood with hunting, both terrestrial and sea-mammal, beautiful material culture, handicrafts …
Continue reading Greenland’s South: Inuit pastoralists in a rapidly changing Arctic environment
On October 3rd our colleagues from the University from the "Sustainable Naturecultures" research group at the Faculty of Social Sciences host an interesting film screening including discussion with the film makers. This could be of interest for all of us who deal with human-animal relations. The film "In the Name of the Wild" explores "wildness" …
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
Many herders, especailly in the Sub-Arctic, are threatened by the increased number of wolves, eating entire reindeer herds. In Australia they go the opposite way now: they try to revive a species of wolf that went extinct in the early 20th century, the last one from Tasmania in 1936. It's a genetics lab experiment that …
Our friend Eduard Khudi and his wife Valentina sent these photos today, of the first reindeer calf of the year, born the 27th April in the Yamal tundra in the camp of Sergei Serotetto's son Lev. The big wave of calving has not started yet, but since then around 5-7 calves have appeared in this …
This winter and spring we hear again disastrous news from sudden temperature rises and falls, leading to thick ice-crusts on reindeer pastures that block reindeer's access to their pastures. While the most famous of these events happened in 2014 in the Centre of the Yamal Peninsula, West Siberia, the phenomenon is known probably to reindeer …
Continue reading Rain on snow – how do people and reindeer learn to survive?
Here are below in youtube Evelyn Landerer's fieldwork stories told during the Corona lockdown which started our idea of collecting stories on a platform. These stories are in German and with pictures.
30 Oct, 14:00, Rovaniemi, Arktikum, 2nd floor, coffee room. In this Wednesday Afternoon Coffee Chat (WACC) Florian Stammler will have a dialogue session with Aytalina Ivanova from Yakutsk reflecting on Arctic research agendas. What was supposed to be the first trip in a new multi-party consortium on scenarios of a changing Arctic became an example …
Continue reading Future Arctic Ecosystems revisited or reindeer herding at the verge of extinction?
This was one of the questions covered in an interdisciplinary exhibition on the effects of global warming and melting permafrost in Yakutia, on display in the Hokkaido museum of northern peoples. The exhibition with the title Thawing Earth - Global Warming in Central Yakutia is a nice example of co-production of knowledge between natural and …
Continue reading Do animal livelihoods in the Arctic suffer from global warming?
Domestication is by most used as a term for the biologically traceable subordination of animals under human control. But anthropologists have for long argued that there are also social definitions of domestication. Very influential was the one by Tim Ingold (2000), who classified domestication as either characterise between a relation of trust or a relation …
Arctic Anthropology 