Report on The Barents Cultural Co-operation - LabforCulture.org

2001-09-26
Introduction
Historical background
Some of the oldest Stone Age cultures in the Barents Region are to be found in
Itsjkovo, Stupino and Kargopol in the Arkhangelsk Region from 14,000 years ago.
The Komsa culture in Finnmark, with hundreds of settlements, is from about 10,000
years ago. The area was the first to be freed from the inland ice and the climate was
especially favourable, with an average summer temperature of two degrees higher
than today.
It is from the Mediterranean countries and ancient Rome and Greece that we find
contemporary descriptions of life in the North and of the early Iron Age. One such
narrator was the Roman historian, Cornelius Tacitus. In the year 98 he described in
his Germania a people, the Fenni, later called Scrihiphioni, living comfortably in the
north. They were clearly identical with the Sami.
A thousand years ago, Arabian historians wrote of a strange community somewhere
in the far north. They told of enormous unknown islands which lay in the ”western
oceans” and that there were communities in this region consisting only of women
and children. These communities without any frontiers seem to have been completely
dominated by women, although for only part of the year. It is a historical reality that
these hunter societies undertook long seasonal expeditions to hunt for game and were
essentially both viking and fishing societies. We know that for centuries fishermen
travelled from the White Sea to Northern Norway and from the Gulf of Bothnia to
the cost of Murmansk. Women and children stayed at home while the men were
away. The legend of the Amazons could have its origins here.
Ottar the Viking
Some time around 890, King Alfred in southern England received a visit from a man
from northern Norway called Ottar of Hålogaland, telling about his travels and his
home.
He was the northernmost noble chieftain in the country. He owned 600 reindeer, had
six lure reindeers (leader reindeer) and even brewed his own beer. He was also in
charge of collecting taxes in the form of products such as skins, down, and ropes
made of walrus and seal skin. Ottar told how he longed to find out if anyone lived
beyond his district and how he sailed northwards, eastwards and then southwards
and found permanent, inhabited settlements. He had obviously got as far as the
southern shore of the White Sea and may also have visited Arkhangelsk.
Ottar’s story tells us about this region as an area where national frontiers and
distance seem not to have existed and where people could live as they pleased on
what the huge region had to offer.
24