orhelia and other oral hist entries
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
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
My book “The Sámi of the Kola Peninsula: About the life of an ethnic minority in the Soviet Union” has been recently translated into English and published on the internet within the publication series of the Centre for Sámi Studies at the University of Tromsø. Using extensive biographical interviews as a primary source, this oral …
I would like to share with you some of the things we learned from Julie Cruikshank and other elders from the Yukon Territory to better understand oral history from the North. To search for surprising insights, to be open to challenges to our conventional perceptions, that was Julie's most important advice to us. Her talk …
Continue reading “If research doesn’t surprise you, it’s not worth the research” Julie Cruikshank
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
It's a high profile conference taking place in St Petersburg, with support by the Arctic Council, RF Ministry of Foreign Affairs, RF Ministry of Culture and the Russian Geographical Society. For us arctic anthropologists, it's nice to see that this conference has cultural communication in its name. The organisers understand under cultural communication all activities …
Arctic Anthropology 