Minoan Lapland: fieldwork, spirituality and connecting across time and space

Abstract

For many years, I believed that fieldwork is primarily about systematic data collection. Only gradually did I begin to understand that fieldwork has several other, equally meaningful dimensions to it. This essay reflects on archaeological and anthropological fieldwork as inspiration and as a kind of a meditative (or a broadly spiritual) practice that, a little like ‘altered states of consciousness’, affords discovering and becoming aware of interconnections between and entanglements of myriad things and phenomena in the world. This approach implies and resonates with landscapes and lived worlds in the High North, such as the Gilbbesjávri (Fi. Kilpisjärvi) region where we conducted fieldwork in 2020, that are characterized by relational animistic-shamanistic ideas of and engagements with reality. In this essay, I discuss two sites–an old Sámi dwelling site and an unexpected piece of environmental art–in relation to interconnections between, and overlapping of, different worlds. I engage with other worldliness in the landscape and dialogue between the European far North and the Mediterranean, as prompted by the said key loci, and how these enable seeing and experiencing landscapes in a new manner.