2/2: What a great trip! We are just a few hours from docking back in Tromsø, having completed student poster presentations, mentor evaluations of the presentations and student evaluations of the mentors. Everyone is packed up with their luggage ready to go.
The final presentations were mock proposals, requests for funds from the Norwegian Research Council. Each project was multidisciplinary and having to do with oil development in the Arctic, following the theme of the Arctic Frontiers conference on Energies of the High North. Participants were mainly PhD candidates and MA students, chosen from various countries including India, Finland, Russia, USA, UK, Germany, Norway, Canada, Sweden, Italy.
There is always a sentimental feeling at the end of such gatherings, having spent a week or so living so close to each other, involved in work projects, conversations, dining, and touring activities. And here, Stig Falk Petersen, project leader, gave such a poignant few sentences, suggesting that members of the group most likely would probably never meet up with each other again but that we had this time together and that was what it is. Here in this video clip below is a sampling of the song/presentation combo. The singer is political scientist from Russia, Julia Skupchenko, and the guitarist is statistician from Barcelona, originally from South Africa, Michael Greenacre. Directly following, is the beginning of one of the presentations which participants had to formulate over the past several days. They lasted about one hour each, and then, the following day, the mentors gathered to critique the projects.
Svolvær is one of the most beautiful places I have visited in my travels. We walked to the end of the cape, passed the fish drying stilts, and managed to laugh about everything on our minds and in our hearts.
1/30: Spending lunch in different places. Working, reading, talking…. Today, we are visiting the Norwegian Coastal Administration Office and getting a dose of how the coast of Norway is managed. What a fabulous presentation, including a discussion in how the government dammed an entire inlet for dredging purposes. Incredible. Great lunch too. There were rolls with shrimp, roast beef and ham.
Karen Andreassen, U. Tromsø glaciologist and Arctos mentor. What a great lady! Karen and I had such a good time chatting away, living off each others words so to speak. We met each other in Murmansk, Russia, last year at the Norwegian Research Council (NRC) sponsored Norwegian-Russian offshore oil and gas workshop, led up by NRC’s Siri Helleman and Russian Academy scientist, Vladimir Pavlenko. In this photo, Karen is shown identifying the various participants of that meeting for my notes.
1/29: We headed to church for a crazy folk concert that I have to get the details on. What a trip. It was in one of Norway’s largest wooden churches, and part of the extensive cultural program in the course. In this video, I went for the organ music, but in fact, the majority of the recital was made up of vocals of a middle aged bard, with whom everyone in the audience seemed to be quite familiar with, and on several occasions sang along with the lyrics.
We went to the candle factory today for lunch. On my previous trip to Svolvær, I remember this visit fondly, spending quality time as I was with anthropologist, Carly McLafferty Dokis. It is a long and beautiful drive, followed by a tour of the local art gallery, and after lunch, we hit the aquarium along with other things…
Cramming in so many activities, I can only refer to them by photograph…. The weather was fabulous. In between the cultural activities, we got a chance to exchange presentations. St. Petersburg State University’s Yulia Smirnova, for example, gave a great talk on Polar Lows, that create all kinds of strange weather patterns, threatening off-shore platforms….
1/28: Having dinner together down in Svolvær. Here is the mentor’s table…
That is Michael Greenacre on the right, consummate musician and statistician from Barcelona. He is chatting with U. Tromsø glaciologist Karin Andreassen, behind her is Stig Falk Petersen, the chief of the operation, and U. Tromsø Professor, across from him is Akvaplan-Niva’s Paul Renaud…
And at the student tables… well let us see…. There is Ms. Polar Lows herself, Yulia Smirnova, up front on the left, sitting across from Murmansk University biologist, Sofia Afoncheva.
…And behind Yulia is U. Tromsø’s gas hydrate master, originally from India, Sunil Vadakkepuliyambatta, and behind him is Canadian newly minted PhD, now working for Government of Canada’s Off-Shore regulatory division, Candace Newman.
Oh Gosh, and here on the left we have Fabio Buansanti, and behind him is the lovely Nadezhda Filimonova, working on arctic gas development in the Barents Sea of all things, right in our back yard…
On the steamship down to Svolvær we gave talks and went on walks during stops…
1/27: en route to Svolvær, just finished my presentation on the boat and I thought it went pretty well. Folks seemed to like it.
Several years ago, I went on this voyage and thought I would never get a chance to go again, but here I am. It is such an amazing privilege and so interesting. We are basically floating along the inside passage on the Hurtingurter Steamship line, talking, eating, sleeping.
We got on board late last night, at around midnight, and the boat departed at 1:30AM
The Scientists…
The view from my window just before departing…
12/28: I have been invited to serve as social science mentor on the PhD field program associated with University of Tromsø Arctic Marine Network. We leave Tromsø, Norway, by boat and head down to the artist community of Lofoton where we hash out our new science ideas. This is an ideal location and group of folks to plan out new coupled-systems research in the Arctic, especially on issues of oil and gas development, and I plan to provide details.
Paparazzi.Ethnography@berkeley.edu
Paparazzi Ethnography 
Leave a Reply