In Rejkjavik, the well-known Finnish architect Alvar Aalto designed a beautiful house that is all about Nordic countries cooperation, the “Nordic House”. We had the honour to be part of the opening seminar there, for nine new Arctic research projects, funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers through its Nordforsk research programme, jointly with Canadian …
Continue reading Paths to a Sustainable Arctic: research avenues
Finally the time has come for a separate blog post advertising and celebrating the publication of a book volume, for which more a dozen Arctic scholars have been waiting for six years: several of us were wrapping up a workshop at Tohoku University's Center for Northeast Asian Studies (Japan), in 2019, where we discussed if …
Continue reading The benefits of the cold: open-access book 2025
Within Finland the new ethical guidelines for research involving the Sámi people in Finland have been widely announced, starting with their launch in June 2024. The guidelines also state that they can be applied across all areas where Sámi reside, i.e. all of Sápmi. Starting at noon Finnish time on the 19th september, at the …
Continue reading new Finnish Sámi research ethics: a reading circle & discussion 19 Sep 2024
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
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
A Russian vessel named "Saami" in a Norwegian wharf in Kirkenes in June 2023: the borderland reality on the ground continues as a lived experience even at times of political conflict A recent trip to Kirkenes and the surroundings was really revealing in many ways. Of course for someone who has worked most of the …
Continue reading East Finnmark – interethnic borderland now and then
A major contribution to Sámi Studies, The Sámi World presents a diversity of research topics from across Sápmi, providing rich and multifaceted understandings of Sámi worlds. The book has been edited by Sanna Valkonen, Professor of Sámi Research, and researchers Áile Aikio, Saara Alakorva and Sigga-Marja Magga from the University of Lapland. Written in English, …
Continue reading New Book in Sámi Studies Illuminates the Diversity of Sámi Worlds
Arctic Anthropology 