Kugluktuk, and quana to all!

Well, I again have been so involved that I have hardly had time to use the Internet! I had an unexpected layover in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, due to fog farther north in Kugluktuk, Nunavut, which meant I met an elder named Roger who was on his way home from a shift at an NWT diamond mine. I also met a new Dene friend and caught 20 northern pike in less than an hour in a small spawning stream! Ahh the north!

When I reached Kugluktuk on Friday May 25, I learned that it was the last day of school, so nearly the entire town was going camping for the weekend via snowmobiles across the 3-foot thick sea ice! (Many people work during the week so must return Sunday evening, although many also subsist on social assistance payments and hunt as they please or are able). So I ran around like a mad Qablunaq (white person, the term may be derogatory) trying to join on a trip. Roger had earlier said I could join him hunting, but he snowmobiled away on the ice just as I was going to his house to say yes! I ran down to another place people go onto the ice, and, thanks to the kind help of other Kugluktukmiut (people of Kugluktuk), met a man named Kanok, who was waiting with his snowmobile on the shore while his wife Wendy and 4 kids prepared in town. A quick ride via ATV back to the house where I was staying to get dressed, and then off across the ice in a wooden box tied to a sled behind the snowmobile! It turns out Kanok is Roger and wife Lena’s son in law and was going to a small cabin on the same island as Roger! I ended up spending most of the next two weeks with the four of them and their children! They let me tag along goose hunting on the mainland by the Rae River to the west, where Kanok and I and his brothers spent many hours chatting, playing cards, and doing magic tricks while crouched in a stone blind hoping geese would fly over head. Once I went with Roger to harvest caribou above Bloody Falls on the Coppermine River (where Chipewyan and Dene men massacred Copper Inuit during Samuel Hearne’s expedition in 1771). The caribou were not afraid of the snowmobile in the least! In addition to shooting, skinning and gutting two caribou, we had a bit of excitement pulling the snowmobile out of two feet of slush and water into which we inadvertently drove a number of times (it being the time of spring melt).

A few days later, we all drove east along a chain of islands set into sky blue water that sat up to a foot deep on top of the sea ice. Snowmelt! Terrifying to snowmobile on what seemed to me like the empty ocean, where a hole could be anywhere! We camped in protected bays in islands where low ponds attracted traveling waterfowl, running out of the tents to call and shoot the birds as soon as we heard their cries. One day Kanok and I drove snowmobiles 15 km or so farther to the northeast to look for goose eggs on ponds in the middle of snowless, rocky islands. This entailed learning how to drive in slush, cross cracks in the sea ice with only water below, waterskip across deep areas, and bomb up 10 meter high snowdrifts onto the island tops, where we circled the ponds on bare ground, rocking the snowmobiles back and forth on the bumpy tundra vegetation. I tried my best to avoid boulders, streams, and bedrock, until we finished our survey without eggs (an unusually late spring this year!) and I had to follow Kanok off across 500 m of pure bedrock, rife with angles, stair steps, melt water streams, erratics, and steep ledges. All of this with a kid also on the snowmobile! If you can snowmobile on rocks, you can snowmobile on snow! So, it seemed incredibly easy once we returned to the ice and I took the sled and all the children in tow! Such trust! Fortunately, despite a low fog that had dropped, we made it back safely, thanks to a GPS and Kanok’s knowledge of the area, in which he has traveled since he was young.

Back at the island cabins, I helped hang caribou meat sliced thinly by Lena and Wendy onto open-air racks to dry. A few days later we skinned and separated the leg bones, broke them open with a hammer or rock, and scooped out the marrow with the back of a spoon. Eaten raw with the meat that was now dry like jerky (but fresh and nutritious with no added salt or smoke), this was one of the most delicious foods I’ve eaten all year. Rich like butter, yet incredibly light, the marrow was filling and nutritious, if a bit fatty for today’s lower calorie expenditures.

In the past few days the river has broken through the dam of ice at its mouth, washing over the sea ice and wearing it away. For 300 or 400 meters away from shore the sea ice is gone, with a muddy churning river flowing out into its delta instead. Now people will put in their small boats and drift down with the current to catch arctic char in nets. Spring and 5 degree C weather have arrived rapidly, breaking the ice MUCH quicker than is normal!

As usual, I have been incredibly fortunate to meet kind people who adopted me temporarily as a son, allowed me to go out with them and their family onto the land, and shared their homes and stories. As in all the places I have visited, the people rise to beauty and meaning in spite of hardship. Here, the most commonly mentioned issue is the aftermath of residential schools in which children were stripped of their language and heritage (taken far away from their family igloos and skin tents for many years, abused in the process, etc.). Today, people live in subsidized southern homes, which seems to disincentivize work, for rent rises to match salary. Snow machines and other equipment are expensive so many cannot go to the land to harvest country food and must rely on food from others or store-bought, unhealthy, and also expensive southern food. Alcohol and drugs are abused. Suicides affect nearly every family, and continue to increase. I do not pretend to be able to understand or accurately describe any of the current issues, so I will not try. The scant time I have spent in each community, or visiting each indigenous group, is by no means sufficient to gain that sort of insight. But what I can say is that most of the peoples I have visited this year share some aspects of a suite of challenges, most of which are shared with the southern regions, with the non-indigenous peoples in these countries, but perhaps to a lesser intensity. These include alcohol and drug abuse, loss of language, dietary shortcomings/insecurity, loss of traditional knowledge about key species and environmental patterns (in large part due to climate change), suicides, sexual and physical abuse, land rights claims that are being slowly addressed, encroachment from extractive industries (which brings pluses as well as minuses), and on and on. All of these are connected and appear overwhelming, yet somehow, from the great difficulty, people draw forth moments of beauty, lifetimes of determination, and hope for the future of their peoples.

The men and women who have shared with me their sleds, sleighs, snowmobiles, tents, chums, lavvus, huts, cabins, homes, clothes, animals, meals, stories, knowledge, land, and lives as I ephemerally joined them this year, all share a collective memory of their homelands that draws from a much deeper history than that of us southerners, whether explorers, exploiters, or do-gooders. In my short year, I have only felt a minute portion of this current of knowledge, spirit, and energy, and I cannot succinctly express how I have changed as a result. But I can say that we have much to learn from, and much to redress with our northern neighbors, and the way to begin will be to slow down and to listen.

This will be my final blog post. Thank you for your support and occasional viewership, which have made it worthwhile for me to share my solitary experience with you as best as I could. If you would like to speak with me about anything, please do, as I have no concrete plans for the future. For now, I will slow down and listen.

Autumn in Qaarsut- a bit late

Only eight months after my first wonderful immersion in the settlement of qaarsut, I have finally reviewed and relived the photographs. Here they are to share. The end of summer.

Spring Migration

Somehow it worked out. The timing was perfect, and the herders unbelievably welcoming. It was refreshing to speak with encouraging people, in English, about their lives today, how things have changed since scooters and cell phones arrived (life is easier and better for herders because they can connect with other people, but they understand the deer less), and what they think of the future ("there is no future for reindeer herding" due to encroachment by infrastructure, summer cabins, etc. Indeed, here, more often than anywhere else I have been this year, I have seen the physical footprint of man on the land.) In the week I was in Norway, I spent about 8 hours NOT on the tundra/mountain/land.

The plane from Copenhagen was late, so I sprinted through the Oslo airport, slipping through the door to the next plane just as it closed. When we reached Alta, I hopped onto the day's bus, arriving to Hemmogieddi (a group of houses north of Kautokeino) around 10 p.m. The father of the family, Anders Isak, came outside to hush the dogs and waved me in. Welcome. Eat. Pack. We are going. We have been waiting for you. And thus we began their spring migration, in which they bring the male and non-pregnant female reindeer to their summer pasture in the mountains of the coast, where it will be cooler than inland. They had already brought the yearlings to the coast by truck, as they are too weak to make the trek through the snowy mountains on their own. The pregnant females will give birth in the highlands near Hemmogieddi, and in snowless June the herders will bring the calves and mothers to the coast using ATVs.

In Russia I was able to see the very start of the spring migration, in which herders slowly move their homes 300 km north over many months. Here, with scooters and a portable tent, it took only one week, in which I was lucky to participate. I believe it was around 150 km, although I could be wrong. We had little sense of time, moving for 3-24 hours when the reindeer could best do so themselves, which was mostly at night, when the temperatures dipped below freezing and hardened the snow. When the herd was tired or the weather foul, we waited and slept for 1-18 hours, either lying directly on the wet ground in patches blown bare of snow, in the lavvu (Saami tent, equivalent of a Russian chum or a teepee), or in two huts along the way. The sun was not up all the time, but it was always light. In fact, sometimes night was lighter than day, as it was misty and wet for much of the week. Since my clothing was inappropriate for the local conditions (as usual) and I am not as hardened as the locals, it was very cold. Colder than anytime this winter, when the temperatures were MUCH lower. I mostly rode on a sled behind a scooter, hiding below a tarp to avoid the spray of slush and ice kicked back by the tread, which did not help me stay warm!

At a few lakes we fished, catching small but delicious land-locked Arctic char. John Ante's scooter was broken, so he joined us partway with more firewood and gasoline. And his uncle Nils skijored up from the coast to meet us also for the last day, when we descended from the mountains to the coast. This was the most spectacular of them all, and the most tense, as they had to bring the reindeer down the mountain and through the town of Langfjordbotn, around 70 deg. N. The snow was too soft for the alternate route up and along the top of "Little Russian Mountain," so named because locals claim it is the site of the final events in the legend that inspired Pathfinder, the most terrifying movie I saw as a child.

What took 8 or 9 men in Nenets AO required only two, driving around on their scooters and throwing lassos at a reindeer with a bell, which they tied to the scooter to lead the other reindeer, with two scooters following behind to keep the deer moving forward. In this way, at 4 in the morning, we descended slowly to and through the sparse birch forest, down a clearing under a power line, and across a road. The reindeer rushed to the sea to drink its sweet sweet salt, their winter diet of lichen providing little of this essential mineral. By foot, car, and scooter (on the road), we then shooed them along the road and beach for a few kilometers past rivers, shorefront houses, and farms. Around 8 am, Uncle Nils took me to the airport so I could go to Germany! The others finished the last 20 km of the migration (to a valley in the inner part of the summer peninsula) the evening I spent in Frankfurt. On 5/21 I returned to North America for the first time since last May. To moist, green, and very tree-filled Vancouver for a day. Now I'm in oil city Edmonton, Alberta, which feels a bit like the US/Midwest. Trucks, suburban sprawl, etc. Tomorrow I will head north for the last section of this incredible year. To Kugluktuk, Nunavut. I plan to return south to America's north- my lovely home in Minnesota, in mid-June. I'd love to see you then!

Out of Greenland

Narwhal/walrus hunting (none seen, unfortunately!)

Ice breakup in Qaarsut

I had a really wonderful time in Qaarsut, just going along with the flow of what locals did every day. Instead of leaving on May 1, I sweet-talked Air Greenland into changing my non-flexible ticket to May 10, so I could go narwhal/walrus hunting with some of the men from town, who said they would leave around May 1! Of course, we left later than expected (May 5), so I spent more time in the settlement. It happened to be Greenland's "Week 18" of the year, which is a week focusing on community activities and not using alcohol. That meant lots of kickball, soccer, and races in the mushy snow, dogsled races in front of town on the ice, and a lot of visiting, along with a jigging competition and the regular hunting and fishing.

The winds kept the ice in the fiord, so we were not able to go hunting until some big ships arrived to empty halibut from the fish factories around the region. On May 5, we dragged the small speedboats out onto the ice, tied them behind a medium sized fishing boat bound for open water, and tried to follow one of the icebreakers on its way back out of the fiord. Unfortunately, the broken ice filled the path behind it, so we could not make it through. We slept overnight in the boat, waited for fog to clear, and followed in the channel, which had now widened due to winds and currents. As we progressed northwest, we reached a puzzle of water interspersed with kilometer-long broken sea ice bits, so we wound our own way through as best we could, acting as an icebreaker at times, and hunting for kittiwakes/seals as we saw them. In the evening, we reached open water, when we immediately heard on the radio that other hunters had seen narwhal. ZOOM off in the small boats, to no avail.

For the next few days, we searched around, which meant standing in the small boat watching the water, hunting seals if we saw them, boiling meat and eating it while moored to a small chunk of floating sea ice, sleeping overnight in a hut (instead of the boat, which was packed with 4 of us), and, for me, worrying that I would not be able to return to towns/airports due to ice. However, on the morning of April 8, we climbed a hill to get mobile phone reception and check on the helicopter schedule, quickly wound our way through packed up sea ice and icebergs to the settlement of Niaqornat, leaped across the watery gap where the ice had piled and melted at the shore, and said goodbye to the kind men who had let me join in their work/pastime/passion/tradition/lifestyle. The chopper (which brought fresh fruit to the settlement of around 60) traveled on a loop to the communities of Illorsuit and Nugaatsiaq, through a mountain pass, and to Uummannaq, still embedded in the sea ice. There, I met a friend who happened to be in town and caught a ride back with him on scooter to Qaarsut, where I washed clothes, said thanks, and caught another chopper for an hour long ride south across Nuussuaq Peninsula to Ilulissat, as the normal airplane had been delayed due to fog. An overnight in Ilulissat with a wonderful family I'd met before, and now I'm in Copenhagen! Tomorrow I should fly/bus to Kautokeino, Norway, where the Sami reindeer migration has conveniently been pushed back due to a late spring. I hope to spend a week traveling by scooter along with a herd from the high plateau down to the coast, from which I will again fly south on the 20th, and then back across the Atlantic! To Vancouver, from which (if everything goes as planned) I will start the last leg of my incredibly lucky trip- Arctic Canada! I plan to visit the community of Kugluktuk. We will see what happens!

For now, I am VERY thankful to the kind people of Greenland (Qaarsut especially) for welcoming me, a young foreigner who knew nothing about anything and had forgotten most of the little Kalallisut he had learned last year, into their homes, boats, sledges, and community.

Soccer and Dogsled Race in Uummannaq

Spring Light in Qaarsut

The closer I get to America, the farther away I feel.

I’m technically back on the tectonic plate and in a satellite of a “western” country, but I feel especially disconnected from home and involved with my project. I’m sad to know I have only two months left but I am also excited at the thought of returning home in the near future!!!

I have returned to Qaarsut, a settlement of about 180 in Greenland, where an extended family of 30 welcomed me into their small community last summer and told me to come back for the ice. Almost every day we’ve gone out. Jigging, netting, longlining through holes or cracks in the ice for personal consumption, seal hunting, ptarmigan hunting, watching huge dogsled races on the sea ice, and playing in the local inter-community indoor soccer tournament in Uummannaq!

People have dogs and dog sled, but not as much as I expected, as they have snowmobiles also, which are much easier. It is kind of a shame, but I think other communities are better off with regard to being able to use their dogs. This is the first year of good ice in the past decade, so many people have shot their dogs and all have gotten out of the habit of sledding. Also, snowmobiles are faster! But, life here is still very slow and relaxed, at least for now while the fish factory is closed and the quotas have been met.

Today I made American pancakes for the family I’m living with. And I am trying to make plans to join a multi-day seal hunt/camping trip on the ice, and also to go to Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, Canada, for the last month of my year!

Videos from the national games in Naryan Mar

Last Days in Russia

Spring flowers, green grass, rain, and ridiculous trendiness in Copenhagen, the capital of the happiest nation on earth (see here for details) made me giggle all day because of the how ridiculously different it is here than in NAO. Now I have been to all the Nordic countries (plus Estonia, which sort of counts as Nordic) but no other European countries (since people here said Russia is not Europe).

On my last day in Naryan Mar, I watched national Nenets spring games, which included jumping over sleighs, lassoing, a running race in traditional fur clothes (in a blizzard), and a sleigh race along the river (the first finisher ironically wins a snowmobile). I left early cause I saw some folks I didn’t want to talk with (since at that point I just wanted to leave Russia safely) and instead attended an ethnic Russian’s birthday party/BBQ in the nearby forest, which included a visit to a BIG bear that lives in a tiny cage at the city dump and subsists on apples and other food from random townspeople (ahhh Russia). Here are some photos (if they load)...

Today is the day I begin to forget all the Russian I learned and to attempt to relearn all the Greenlandic I already forgot from the fall.

Back from the tundra

Well, it wasn’t what I had hoped for (a family), but it turned out fine in the end. They asked me not to write too much or post pictures, but I can tell you this much.

I rode on a snowmobile with a few fellows who stopped every 20 min. to get warm/strong (aka drink vodka). At sunset we arrived at the chum where I’d hoped to stay. A motley group waited outside, saying they did not want to host me. So in the dark, I drove with another fellow (the first being too drunk), to another chum 10 km away, where only men worked (and one “chum worker” woman to cook/clean/sew). Here, I found a group of 6-10 mostly welcoming Komi and Nenets men (some occasionally went on holiday to town), who work for about $2/day, live 24/7 together in a chum (which they own along with all their belongings except the deer), and still call their employer the “kholkhoz” (meaning collective Soviet farm). When the directors of the kholkhoz arrived, I had to explain who I was and why I was at their chum, in Russian, which was nerve-wracking. I convinced them I was not a spy, and they let me stay to help build a corral in the forest, drive 3000 reindeer into it to separate into two herds, lasso and tackle deer to the ground, move the herd from one lichen grazing area to another, watch men chop down trees and shape and combine them with only hand tools into sturdy and flexible sleighs (including heat/steam bending the wood over a fire outside), harness reindeer to the sleighs, collect and split lots of wood for the stove (I drove the reindeer sleigh sometimes!), collect water from nearby lakes, and, perhaps most excitingly, take down the chum, load all belongings onto sleighs, and start the spring migration northward, which will bring them 300 or 400 km north to the sea for the summer.

The man who was supposed to come every weekend to check if I wanted to return to the city never arrived (broken snowmobile). So, after a week of waiting fruitlessly when my hosts no longer wanted me there (cause I’m an annoying foreigner who knew nothing about living in a teepee in the Russian forest-tundra in winter), I paid the only herder with a snowmobile to bring me back. It of course broke down partway, so we called the first fellow (now being within mobile coverage), who came and met us in his new snowmobile (he had planned to pick me up the next day). Sitting out in the middle of a frozen marsh in a snowstorm, we discussed the whole situation and made amends.

In this way I spent three weeks in the tundra of Nenets AO, along with eating 5 meals a day of delicious reindeer (mostly boiled, sometimes frozen and raw dipped in blood, sometimes with raw frozen fish too), playing lots of cards (they wanted me to bet away all my belongings), and watching endless World War II movies on their tiny dvd player when the generator they won last year at a reindeer race was running. It was awesome and I feel very lucky it all went well (or at least not as badly as it could have gone!)

I suppose I’ve had quite an adventure.

Now I’ll wash reindeer hairs off of the one set of clothes I wore, watch this year’s reindeer race and national games (on the frozen Pechora River), and fly to Denmark and back to Greenland April 11-May 1. Off to new adventures on the sea ice I hope will last until I arrive!

Why am I so lucky?

Why do so many people extend their kindness and generosity to me? I am not speaking only about the hundreds I have visited or asked for directions this year, but also about those I’ll call facilitators, who have helped organize or invite me to places. In the long list of facilitators, I would like to thank those associated with the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded International Polar Year (IPY) project CLUE (Circumpolar Land Use and Ethnicity). Thank you to Anna Stammler-Gossman for suggesting I join the expedition, to Hugh Beach for allowing it, to Tamara Semenova for making it all happen, to Thomas Thornton and Diana Mastracci for being enthusiastic about my presence, to Olga Povoroznyuk for helping me search for opportunities to stay on after the project, and to Alexander, a stranger and now friend, for inviting me to your home after my presentation on the last day of the project, when I wasn’t sure if I would fly back to Moscow or try to stay on! You all are great, and I am extremely thankful to each and every one of you.

On the 3 week trip we flew or drove in huge off-road vehicles on frozen rivers to settlements Indiga, Krasnoe, Karataika, and Khongurey, where the team interviewed Nenets and Izhma Komi reindeer herders and townspeople about their personal histories and the influences of post-Soviet policies, oil and gas development, and climate change on their lives and livelihoods. The project asked exactly the questions I would have loved to ask, and should hopefully create a good portrait of some of the issues indigenous people face in the circumpolar north.

Nenets!

The research trip I am on is super awesome. The people, fluent in both English and Russian, ask exactly the questions I would like to ask but cannot due to my lack of words. We've interviewed reindeer herders and many others about climate change, oil/gas development and encroachment, social issues (no young people want to herd, etc.).

And we just came from a town called Indiga (pop 800) to a town called Krasnoe. I was terrified cause we have traveled in teeny old russian-made bi-wing planes. From Indiga we snomobiled to a herder's chum (teepee) where we stayed overnight. I rode a sledge drawn by reindeer under a brilliant corona of northern lights and also lassoed a reindeer on my first try, with a rope made of reindeer skin, from a herd of 2000 deer that circled around us on a small hill. it was awesome. the interviews on the project are great too....

if i fall off the face of the planet, assume i've made it to some family based truly nomadic herder's camp, where i will try to stay as long as possible (1-3 weeks/months).

also, unfortunately, 150 km of bumping in a sled behind a snowmobile has killed my camera. i am very unhappy about the prospect.

Rossiya, take 2!

Well, they let me back into the country again! So, I'm in Moscow, where I toured the Red Square, Kremlin, a museum and some churches. I just met all the other team members for the research trip, and early tomorrow we fly to the Arctic, to Naryan Mar, in Nenets Autonomous Okrug. I dunno how much internet connection I will have for the next time, which means I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing for this year! After the research trip I hope to extend my permission so I can stay in what you could call a teepee (there are other names for them here, in Norway, and in Tuva), with some reindeer herders till I return to Norway in April to help out on a fishing boat and migrate with a reindeer herd from Kautokeino down to the sea. In Nenets it could very easily be minus 50 or 60 (F or C). So, I'm a bit worried, but I think it will work out!

Back to Russia

Well, I managed to hitch a ride on a sledge behind a snowmobile. It was the singularly least enjoyable mode of transport I've ever done. Sitting on a frozen reindeer carcass and empty fuel cans with a nervous dog in my lap, trying to also stay on the sled and not become frost-bitten from fierce cross winds in a blizzard. Somehow, I made it back to Hemmogiede, a small assortment of houses, stood on the side of the road for an hour in minus 25 C, finally hitchiked into Kautokeino, and caught a ride to the Jokkmokk Winter Market in Sweden, arriving at around 2 am I promptly fell asleep on a gym floor and woke up for 3 days of excellent Sami food, costumes, parties, etc. Now I'm in Oslo, on my way to Moscow, to meet the team for the research project CLUE (Circumpolar Land Use and Ethnicity). Sunday we'll fly north to Naryan Mar in Nenets Autonomous Okrug! Man I'm excited...

Here are a few photos from Finland, Norway, and Estonia...

Ooh exciting!

I'm writing from the winter cabin at the reindeer herding grounds of some folks I met in Kautokeino. Unlike the cabin in Tuva, this one has a generator and electricity, wireless internet, and a phone signal, but no water and only a wood stove for heat and cooking. This time of year there's not much to do, aside from riding on a snowmobile through all terrain, circling the herd of more than a thousand reindeer, to make sure no groups of 1-200 reindeer wander off in search of food or other nearby herds, butchering a few deer to bring to a Sami education day at a nearby folk high school, collecting firewood, water from the river, etc. It's super different from how herding is done in Tuva, where it mainly serves to facilitate quick movement while hunting. Here, it's all about the meat. And supposedly the sale price has fallen and support from the government has gone to extractive industries instead (typical). It's only been around -20 celcius, (-4 F), but very windy, and it's quite cold zooming on a scooter at 50-60 km/hr. Clutching to the driver and trying not to fall off helps you to keep warm though.

If some folks stop by from a nearby cabin on their way back to town in the next 30 minutes, I will be able to hop on a 2 pm bus going straight to Jokkmokk, Sweden, for the Jokkmokk Winter Market, an annual Sami festival that started in the early 1600s. The herders I've been with may gather their reindeer into a fence next Monday and Tuesday (so they can migrate them down to town to sell). So I may also be able to come back up and watch that awesome process before I fly to Oslo Feb. 9, Moscow Feb. 10, and Nenets Autonomous Okrug on Feb. 12, with the anthropology field expedition. Allllright!

But, as usual, everything depends on my making it back down to town, which, of course, is uncertain. (Update: the generator ran out of fuel, we ran out of water (I washed a bunch of dishes with snow melted on the fire), and the people on the snowmobile slept in and still have not arrived, so I will hopefully hitch a ride with someone driving to Jokkmokk today or tomorrow...) Ahhh adventure!

In Sápmi

Well, again, since I’ve blogged, a lot has happened. Firstly, I broke my computer, and I’m still in the process of recovering my photos… I also joined a really cool anthropology field expedition that will go to Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Russia Feb. 12-March 3 to study indigenous land use and ethnicity under conditions of climate change and industrial development. Afterwards I hope to stay in Russia on my own, because I also took a train from Rovaniemi to Helsinki and acquired a 90-day Russian visa in 2 days, which I think must be a record for speed. And in celebration, I took a ferry with my dad (who was in Helsinki by coincidence), to Estonia. For a wonderful weekend, we toured around bogs, forests, and old cities with buildings from every period of the last 1000 years, and learned about how many times the Estonians have been conquered by Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, and Russians. It’s not the Arctic, but it was a fun and productive vacation weekend to learn about post-Soviet development in an old USSR country. Estonia seems to be thriving.

And then I began a quick bus, taxi, ferry, train, taxi, bus, and taxi trip across the Baltic and north through Finland to Kautokeino, Norway, (or wikipedia here) a center of Sami culture and reindeer herding in the center of Sápmi, the red area on the map. I’m really interested in learning about how herding differs in VERY wealthy Norway as compared the mountainous South Siberian forests (Tuva) or European Russian Arctic (Nenets). In Kautokeino I’ve been staying with a schoolteacher whose husband was supposed to bring his deer to the butcher in town yesterday or today, which is why I came so quickly. However, as is usual with Arctic peoples or wild animals, things change, so yesterday I rode behind her brother on his snowmobile while he made his daily check on his reindeer herd, dispersed in meadows across the frozen river. But today he went alone to move his reindeer to a new pasture and cull a sick calf, both of which I would’ve liked to see… Everyone has suggested I need to buy a snowmobile, about which I’m not so confident. We’ll see. I was able to help him butcher two of his reindeer in the snow under the headlight of a snowmobile, since the sun is only up for an hour or two.

I am lucky

In case I hadn't already known.
Today a Saami lady from Norway invited me to help butcher some of her reindeer, and I may have found an opportunity to go to the Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Russia!

And I skiied for two hours on skis that a Norwegian lent to me. (Within an hour of my arrival in Norway back in December, I went for a walk and met a fellow who not only lent me skis for two months, but also took me that day to an (Ant)Arctic festival commemorating the 100th Anniversary of Roald Amundson's South Pole expedition!). And then I took a wonderful Finnish sauna. At 80-100 deg C, it was a lot hotter than the Russian banya, which reaches only about 40-50 deg C.

I was looking through some photos and found this one of a Greenlandic fisherman going to his boat in mid-September snow. I couldn't resist sharing it. What a place! What a people!

From We are not so big

Happy Holidays!

I've finally returned to the Arctic, to a folk high school that teaches dogsledding, sailing and outdoor life, near Tromso, at 69 degrees. The sun won't rise for another few weeks, but there's a surprising amount of light midday for 2 or 3 hrs. They call it "polar night," meaning the sun doesn't rise, but until you go really far north, it still gets lightish midday. Yesterday I drove my first ever dogsled- 4 hrs in blustery wind by headlamp! It's a fun and FAST way to travel. I clipped a few trees by mistake. Yup, Norway's Arctic has lots of trees, thanks to the Gulf Stream. It also has farms (sheep, cows, strawberries!) and lots of people; Norway is VERY rich and has chosen to maintain a rural population throughout the country. It's only about freezing, so not too cold at all! (It was -30 C the day I left Krasnoyarsk). When I arrived to Norway Dec. 14 I spent a few days visiting friends in Oslo and the holidays with a family near Trondheim . I'd like to return to Russia, so I will hop across the border to northern Finland to speak with researchers about contacts in reindeer herding communities in the Russian north! But first I may watch a sled dog race in Finnmark county, Norway.

I've posted some photos of my time in Tuva, which was 1 week with other researchers making contacts in the Tozhu region and 2 weeks on a hunting and fishing trip (bracketed by a stay with a wonderful family).