Finnmark 2007 Diary

This report comes to you from the sledge as we mush towards Kautokeino aiming for our next overnight stop at Láhpoluoppal. This is our second day now in the wild as we mush from Karasjok towards Kautokeino. We’ve had two good days of travel - putting up the tents, suffering over a fire of birchwood, and climbing into our sleeping bags as early as 9.00pm to give us the chance of a good night’s rest, and to also save electricity. Darkness falls at around 6.15/6.30pm but we get good light in the morning from around 5.30/5.45pm.

We’ve had interesting meetings with herders in the Karasjok area who gave us a variety of views which were instructive, and showed us the flexibility and adaptability they have in their approach to their work, especially the variety of opinions there are as to how one should manage reindeer. They all, without exception, talk of changing seasons coming earlier. We will be meeting more herders in Kautokeino.

We’ve been living on NATO army rations these days out in the field which are an awful lot better than the adventure packs one tends to get, but its been somewhat like muesli soup for breakfast, vegetable soup for lunch, and fish soup for dinner, but healthy decent stuff. We are so tired, and so hungry, we’ll eat anything. Lying out the dogs on their lines, melting the snow for their food because its important they get enough liquid and don’t get dehydrated, and then put up our tents, and if we’ve got the energy make up a fire, sit round and have the dregs of the whisky we brought with us before going to bed with most of our clothes still on. As far as washing goes, in the morning we’ve just about managed to wash our teeth, and stagger towards the privacy of a nearby tree to answer nature’s call.

I think that’s all for now. We’ll soon give you a full update on our meetings with the herders. The generosity of the people here is remarkable, and they are willing to talk once they realise we are serious about understanding them. These extremely sophisticated, perhaps the most culturally vital people in the arctic, have economic advantages, and are probably the richest indigenous people in the arctic, but the fact remains their generosity to our questions, their interest in our efforts to speak to a wider public on their behalf, and their warmth and hospitability, has been deeply heart warming to us all.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 6:58 pm and is filed under week 3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.