MY STORY

Focused on understanding different perspectives on the world

I am an anthropologist based in Tartu, Estonia. As an undergraduate student I made my first field trip to the Nenets tundra in 1999. I have been visiting nomadic communities in the Russian Arctic since then, and have enjoyed their hospitality for many months over the years. In 2006 and 2007, I spent almost a year in two nomadic Nenets communities in the northeastern tundra of geographical Europe. I am glad to have found good friends among those Northerners who are sometimes characterised as silent and taciturn by outsiders. I invite you to learn more about them and my work below.

FIELDWORK

Anthropologists have a unique method called participant observation which makes this discipline different from other social sciences. To put it simply, this means living with people and trying to grasp their cultural logics. Exactly how one does this can differ. I have both paid short visits to different families as well as stayed for months with one family, which has shaped my sense of what it means to live this particular kind of life. As staying in the tundra means living in the same tent with the family, this is an ideal setting for near total immersion into local life. However, my experience of doing fieldwork in the Nenets area as well as several other parts of Russia for almost two years has taught me how painstakingly slow the process of gaining a deeper understanding of another culture may be.