‘Where the F… is Vuotso?’ : heritage of Second World War forced movement and destruction in a Sámi reindeer herding community in Finnish Lapland
In this paper we discuss the heritage of the WWII evacuation and the so-called ‘burning of Lapland’ within a Sámi reindeer herding community, and assess how these wartime experiences have moulded, and continue to mould, the ways people memorialise and engage with the WWII material remains. Our focus is on the village of Vuotso, which is home to the southernmost Sámi community in Finland. The Nazi German troops established a large military base there in 1941, and the Germans and the villagers lived as close neighbours for several years. In 1944 the villagers were evacuated before the outbreak of the Finno-German ‘Lapland War’ of 1944–1945, in which the German troops annihilated their militar…
Landscapes of Loss and Destruction: Sámi Elders’ Childhood Memories of the Second World War Sámi Elders’ Childhood Memories of the Second World War
The so-called Lapland War between Finland and Germany at the end of the Second World War led to a mass-scale destruction of Lapland. Both local Finnish residents and the indigenous Sami groups lost their homes, and their livelihoods suffered in many ways. The narratives of these deeply traumatic experiences have long been neglected and suppressed in Finland and have been studied only recently by academics and acknowledged in public. In this text, we analyze the interviews with four elders of one Sami village, Vuotso. We explore their memories, from a child’s perspective, scrutinizing the narration as a multilayered affective process that involves sensual and embodied dimensions of memory.
Dark Heritage
Peer reviewed
Landscapes of loss and destruction: : Sámi elders’ childhood memories of the second world war
The so-called Lapland War between Finland and Germany at the end of the Second World War led to a mass-scale destruction of Lapland. Both local Finnish residents and the indigenous Sámi groups lost their homes, and their livelihoods suffered in many ways. The narratives of these deeply traumatic experiences have long been neglected and suppressed in Finland and have been studied only recently by academics and acknowledged in public. In this text, we analyze the interviews with four elders of one Sámi village, Vuotso. We explore their memories, from a child’s perspective, scrutinizing the narration as a multilayered affective process that involves sensual and embodied dimensions of memory. ©…
Toward a holistic understanding of pastoralism
Pastoralism is globally significant in social, environmental, and economic terms. However, it experiences crises rooted in misconceptions and poor interdisciplinary understanding, while being largely overlooked in international sustainability forums and agendas. Here, we propose a transdisciplinary research approach to understand pastoralist transitions using (1) social, economic, and environmental dimensions, (2) diverse geographic contexts and scales to capture emerging properties, allowing for cross-system comparisons, and (3) timescales from the distant past to the present. We provide specific guidelines to develop indicators for this approach, within a social-ecological resilience anal…
Public engagements with Lapland’s Dark Heritage: Community archaeology in Finnish Lapland
Research project Lapland’s Dark Heritage organized a one-week public excavation in Inari, Finnish Lapland, at a Second World War (WWII) German military hospital site in August 2016. #InariDig took place with the help of international experts and pre-registered volunteers. In this field report, two of the archaeologists leading the excavations and an ethnographer who took part in documenting this community archaeology experiment introduce the excavation sites and activities reflecting on the engagements with volunteers and local community. peerReviewed