Enacting Nature in Unjárga-Nesseby, Northern Norway

“This is not a wilderness. This is where we live.” Enacting nature in Unjárga-Nesseby, Northern Norway Stine Rybråten Dissertation submitted for the partial fulfilment of the Ph.D. degree, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo, June 2013 Acknowledgements This thesis is the result of several demanding but also rewarding years of research, and its completion is due, in great measure, to the invaluable contributions I have received from many people and several institutions. Firstly, I want to express my gratitude to the people in Unjárga-Nesseby for their great hospitality and for including me in the life of the community as well as the outfields. For all the activities and stories shared with me during my stay, and all the help I have received when writing up and analysing my data, I am deeply thankful. I would also like to thank Unjárga-Nesseby municipality and Varjját Sámi Musea (VSM) for providing me with work places in friendly environments during my year of fieldwork. At VSM I was further given the opportunity to lead a small project that prolonged my stay, and upon returning to the museum last year as an employee, I was given the possibility to work part time, in order to complete my thesis. For this Kjersti Schanche and Mia Krogh deserve special thanks. During the years that I have been a PhD student, Professor Marianne Elisabeth Lien at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, has been my highly valued supervisor. For her analytical insights, availability, enthusiasm, thoroughness and generosity I am deeply indebted. Her own work has further served as constant inspiration for my theoretical reflections. Dr. Grete K. Hovelsrud has also been profoundly influencial in the development of my PhD research. As both my second supervisor and research leader at CICERO Center for International Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo, my workplace during my PhD years, she has shared her rich knowledge and provided invaluable support and encouragement throughout the whole process. In following the educational PhD program at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, several people at SAI have provided various kinds of irreplaceable assistance over the years. Among my fellow students, I am particularly grateful for the cooperation and friendship of Maria Øyen, Cecilie Nordfelt, David Ramslien, Ingrid Smette and Celine Loades. Furthermore, heartfelt thanks goes to Gro Ween, Knut Nustad and Ásdís Jónsdóttir for all the inspiring conversations, and for kindly providing perceptive comments to iii earlier versions of three of the chapters. Professor Kjersti Larsen at the Department of Ethnography, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, generously offered to read and comment upon the first draft of my thesis, and her insightful suggestions and constructive critique provided an essential aid and guidance throughout the thesis revision. For this I am deeply grateful. During my time at CICERO I have benefited from professional collaboration and social interaction with good colleagues across academic disciplines. In particular, I want to thank Helene Amundsen, Jennifer West, Torben Mideksa, Jeremy White, Halvor Dannevig, Trude Rauken, Bob van Oort, Sigrid Rian Song, Erlend Hermansen, Marianne Karlsson, Armando Lamadrid and Ragnhild Bieltvedt Skeie for stimulating discussions and enjoyable company. I also want to thank former colleague Winfried Dallman for clearing time in his busy schedule to assist me in customizing maps of particular relevance for my thesis. My PhD fellowship was granted by the Research Council of Norway, as part of the Community Adaptation and Vulnerability in Arctic Regions research consortium. My participation in CAVIAR provided me with valuable knowledge, information and inspiration from the activities it occasioned, including community meetings, multidisciplinary workshops and conferences. It also opened the opportunity for a three month visit to the Department of Geography, University of Guelph, where I was generously welcomed by Professor Barry Smit and his research team in the Global Environmental Change Group. This stay was financially supported by UNIFOR through the Ella and Robert Wenzins endowment. I am genuinely thankful for Jeremy White’s flexible availability and skilful proof reading of the draft version of this thesis. In addition to significantly improving my English, he has offered valuable editorial comments and useful suggestions for all chapters. Furthermore, inspiring discussions evolved during the process, making the text exchange a great experience and a lot of fun. I also want to thank Katrine Trane Nilsen, Mihkku Solbakk, Aage Solbakk and Øystein Nilsen for their time spent checking and correcting my Sámi spelling. Any errors and omissions to be found in the thesis remain my responsibility. In my final phase of writing, Jorunn Jernsletten and Kjersti Schanche contributed valuable input to two chapters that I found myself struggling to complete. Thank you so much. Family and friends have been wonderfully supportive during my time as a PhD student. In particular, I want to thank Dagmar Trane, my mother in law, for all practical help during the last year of intensive writing. A special thank also goes to Marianne Aasen, for not only sharing the highs and lows of being a PhD student and commenting on earlier drafts of iv several chapters, but also for invaluable friendship and encouragement. Your wonderful personality and wise words made rough times easier to deal with and good times even more joyful. My parents, Bente Høyer and Svein Rybråten have, as always, shown unwavering encouragement and support. I am sincerely grateful that you, time and time again, are ready to travel 2000 km, or whatever it takes, to help out and be near. My brother Jonas is a constant inspiration due to his impressive ability to combine determination and hard work with total relaxation. Thank you also for re-convincing me that those tough moments always pass. Last, and most importantly, I want to thank Geir for immeasurable support, for always being there and for letting me be who I am. Without you constituting such a firm part of our Team PhD, I would never have made it to the end. And Isak: Thank you for continuously reminding me about the most important things in life. v vi Table of contents Acknowledgements iii Table of contents vii List of illustrations ix Note on languages and words xi 1. Nature and the North – an introduction 13 2. Unjárga-Nesseby – Spatial and temporal trajectories 33 3. Methodology 57 4. “This is not a wilderness. This is where we live” – On outfield belonging 77 5. Enacting nature(s) in seasons of snow 99 6. Enacting nature(s) between snowmelt and snowfall 141 7. Food, living resources and the in-betweens of wild and tame 183 8. Stories of environment transitions – Enacting nature(s) through talk and texts 213 9. Multiple natures 243 References 249 Appendix 1 267 vii viii List of illustrations Figures Figure 1: Map of Sápmi 34 Figure 2: Map of Eastern Finnmark 34 Figure 3: Map of Unjárga-Nesseby municipality 35 Figure 4: Map of Finnmarksløpet 119 Pictures Picture 1: The harbour with the curch in the background 37 Picture 2: Houses by the fjord 38 Picture 3: Anna demonstrating the making of a ptarmigan snare 112 Picture 4: Trapped ptarmigan 116 Picture 5: Two mushers and dog teams arriving at the checkpoint 121 Picture 6: Spectators at the checkpoint 122 Picture 7: Ice fishing at Suovvejávri/Bergebyvann 127 Picture 8: From the catch of the day 130 Picture 9: Fishing vessels in the harbour 132 Picture 10: Gutting cod 137 Picture 11: Fishing for salmon 149 Picture 12: Picking blueberries 153 Picture 13: Tor and the sheep 164 Picture 14: Heading for the village 166 Picture 15: In the corral 171 Picture 16: Observing females and calves 175 Picture 17: Area with dead dwarf birch (Betula nana) and heath 224 Tables Table 1: List of names on animals and plants mentioned in the thesis 267 ix x Note on languages and words Throughout the thesis, Sámi terms, place names and names on animals and plants are presented in the North Sámi language according to current orthography. In several cases, however, the Unjárga-Nesseby dialect has been decisive for terms and names included (see e.g. table 1). In cases where both Sámi and Norwegian names, terms and expressions are referred to directly in the text, without further explanations, they are written in italics, included in brackets and divided by a forward slash. The Sámi term is referred to first, followed by the corresponding term in Norwegian, e.g. outfields (meahcci/utmark). Occasionally only one of the languages is referred to in the text, dependent upon the language preferred by my informants in the particular situations. The denomination Sámi can be spelled in several different ways, as Sámi, Sami or Saami. In this thesis I have chosen to use the variant Sámi. xi xii 1 Nature and the North – an introduction his thesis is about nature practices in Unjárga-Nesseby, a coastal Sámi community in T Northern Norway, and the various ways these practices conjoin interrelations of humans, animals, plants, seasonality and weather. The analysis is based upon ethnographic data encompassing harvesting practices, food production activities, the sharing of food products and ways through which change is perceived and explained. With its Arctic location, Unjárga-Nesseby belongs to a region of particular relevance to climate change research. In my study, everyday activities and conversations related to the Unjárga-Nesseby landscape serve as a basis to explore the concept of nature and investigate how the notion of global climate change actualizes nature in new ways. Nature thus provides the unifying theme of this thesis. Or rather natures do. As my thesis focuses on the processes through which nature is produced, or enacted, I show how different natures are brought into being through the interaction of people and landscapes, including weather and seasonal variations, as well as through materiality and discourse.

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