They also asked me for specific things that they cannot obtain in the tundra or village, for instance special clothes, ropes, canvas etc. So I am planning to go back to Ust'-Usa in not too far future. A ship, which had come to provide the settlement with fuel, took me and other passengers back to Ust'-Usa. Almost three days we lived on the ship, travelling down the Kolva-Vis and the Kolva, all through the area of oil production. The next day, I went to Usinsk in order to get hold of some money, phone my relatives and friends and do some shopping.
Anthropologists think that fieldwork is at the very core of their research.
Living together with a specific group of people is a method for learning how the members of this group do things, how they assess and tackle problems in everyday life and how they think about specific questions and, more generally, the world around them. Before I set out for fieldwork, I was often thrilled by and was looking forward to the exotic aspects of a nomad's life. Immediately after the fieldwork, I felt that many things that had seemed so exotic beforehand have become rather ordinary. The main, and perhaps trivial, insight of my fieldwork was that the people I lived with do not intend to be exotic but, by working pretty hard, just try to make ends meet. And now I would like you to visit the photo gallery.