The vast forests in Russia – called the Russian taiga – have over the past hundred years been of great importance to people along the cold coasts of Northern Norway, Greenland, Svalbard and the Kola coast. The great rivers of Siberia flow north, and were used for floating timber. The need for timber in Europe was enormous in the 1800s and 1900s. Thousands of boatloads of Russian timber have passed through Norkapp on their way to England, the Netherlands and Germany.

But a lot of timber has drifted past the booms and into the Arctic Ocean. From here, the Gulf Stream has taken it under the ice where it has frozen solid, and after many years the ice has thawed along the coast of Greenland and provided the Inuit with vital material for sledges, huts and fuel. What did not land in Greenland continued downward until the Gulf Stream again captured it and sent it north along the lust of Norway and eastward into the ice again. If the timber was met by a storm, it drifted ashore in sheltered bays along the coast and was important for the northern Norwegian population. A log from the shoreline at Grense Jakobselv – 600 km east of Kirkenes – is on display in our gallery.

Imagine that here in the Kirkenes area, we have Norway's oldest mountain – dating back 2,900 million years. For comparison, the mountains in Lofoten are around 2,850 million years old. We are talking about a grey, banded gneiss, part of the ancient rocks of Sør-Varanger and the Kola Peninsula. Uranium-lead dating shows that this rock is 2,903 million years old. Even more remarkable, in Pasvik, 50 km south of the Snow Resort, a gneiss that may be as old as 3,690 million years has been detected. These age datings have been carried out by the Finnish Geological Survey.

During the ice age, Kirkenes and Sør-Varanger were covered by a 2 km-thick layer of ice. As the ice began to melt, it sculpted the mountains into rounded mounds. Around 10,000 years ago, the first coastal strip emerged in Bøkfjorden.

As the ice tumbled into the sea—similar to what we now see when the Greenland ice sheet calves—it left behind polished rocks, a lasting imprint of this immense natural history.

Inger Blix Kvammen’s work deals with topics such as migration and cultural exchange across borders, particularly in the context of indigenous cultures in the Barents region. Her last three projects are a result of travelling to the Nenets Autonomous Ukrug in north-west Russia and to cities and villages in the South Caucasus, a border area between Turkey and Armenia.

Inger Blix Kvammen lives and works in the town of Kirkenes, in the county of Finnmark; a place at the heart of the Barents region and a border area nestled between Russia and Finland in the north-eastern most tip of Norway. As an artist, Inger Blix Kvammen is self-taught with an academic education as a foundation. Much of her studies in the artfield, involving specialized courses, comes from studies in the United States and England.

Her three latest projects, from the series MEMORY ARCHIVES, deal mostly with indigenous cultures — about meetings with different cultures and about migrations and cross-cultural exchanges. Impressions, that are traded in objects and photography, differentiate themselves by being stronger and more vivid than renderings or imagery of daily life and culture in different types of societies. Each work reproduces impressions that form compound stories. The sum of big and small events, experiences and meetings, along with everyday knowledge, becomes an important part of the exhibit’s didactics and content, where one can ask the big and existential questions: «Who am I?», «Why am I who I am?», «Where do I come from?», «Where am I going?».

In the project TUNDRA ARCHIVES, Blix Kvammen takes hold of and distinguishes the nomadic people’s nations in North-West Russia; The possibilities of this culture in the near future, their role as cultural bearers as well as women’s role in the continuation of cultural heritage and belonging, are issues that are affected. Some of the works have texts that become an important part of storytelling — as fragments or documentation of living lives.

Blix Kvammen has developed a unique method of using textile techniques such as crochet, weaving and metal embroidery that conceptually combines decorative shapes, like necklaces or bracelets, with stories and symbolic elements. Impressions of meetings with people and cultures are expressed with forms, basic material, craftsmanship and conceptual performance, and by combining and incorporating different materials and photography.

Blix Kvammen is a member of the Sami Artists’ Union (Samisk Kunstnerforbund), the Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts (Norske Kunsthåndverkere) and the Association of Norwegian Visual Artists (Norske Billedkunstnere).

Over the years, Inger Blix Kvammen has held a number of central and regional positions in artists’ organisations and in arts and culture institutions nationally. In 1996, Blix Kvammen was one of the founders of the collective of producers and curators called Pikene på Broen who, in 2001, formed the cultural company behind the annual art festival, Barents Spektakel, along with the artist in residence program, BAR International. As of 2017, Pikene på Broen has established Terminal B; an exhibition, workshop and dialogue room in the centre of Kirkenes. Since 2001, Blix Kvammen has worked for Pikene på Broen in a part-time position as senior adviser.

For many years, Inger Blix Kvammen was represented by Electrum Gallery, London. She has had a number of exhibitions at home and abroad and received scholarships from, amongst others; the Arts Council Norway, Finnmark County and the Sami Artists’ Union. Her work has been acquired by the North Norwegian Art Museum, the Sami Parlament, Sami Collections, Arts Council Norway, the Sparebank Foundation and several other public and private bodies.

Website: Inger Blix Kvammen

Elisabeth Thorsen is a Norwegian shoemaker and artist living in Vardø!

She graduated from the Norwegian shoemaker school in 2008 and has been making art out of shoes ever since. She approaches her projects with a unique angle as she is making pieces of art, not merely functional footwear. Her shoes have an aesthetic expression, pleasing to the eye as well as challenging to fully grasp. She likes to craft her shoes experimenting with unusual material not commonly used for shoemaking. Recycled material such as furniture, pencils, carpets, drapes and other unusual material such as ice, sugar and sports tape has all been included in her work.

Her inspiration is from fairytales, nature, art and 70s movies. She also does performancesboth live and in video productions. Her previous work has been shown at:Kunsthalle Budapest, Kunsthaus Wien, Scloss Lichtenwalde (Germany) Krakow, Abu Dhabi, Oslo and Kuwait.

In 2017, Elisabeth Thorsen designed & launched her own exclusive and limited collection of goodyear welted shoes made in Portugal. Many of the shoes are made with hand-woven vintage carpets and vegetable tanned leather. The carpet shoes are unique items, no pair is completely the same. Some of the plain leather shoes are unique pieces where other artists have been invited to decorate them. Elisabeth also wants to invite the buyer to do something special with the shoes themselves.

Elisabeth is a part of the wonderful Virtual Shoe Museum & a proud member of The Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts (link to my page at NK)

Artists Webpage: madebybetty.com

This is one of Northern Norway's most visited sights. Over the years, the place has developed into a gem of personal architecture. What lies behind is a sincere urge to

create something beautiful and an irrepressible joy in working. You will find the facility on a hill above the river a little outside the town of Kautokeino in inner Finnmark. The Juhls family expresses itself in several forms within crafts and art. Making jewelry became the most important thing.

Juhls Silvergallery is Finnmark's first silversmith, established in 1959. Before this, no one had dealt with the Sami's special relationship with jewellery. No one could have imagined the glittering splendor we can see in the Sami area today.

Another task was to recreate the strong impressions that Arctic nature makes. Many of the older models in Regine Juhls' jewelery collection Tundra are today considered modern classics.

Regine and Frank Juhls met here in the fifties. They were each attracted by the village's inaccessibility, the Sami's nomadic life and the great untouched nature. Their house was to emphasize Vidda's generous and undulating forms. At the same time, it was supposed to be an oasis for human creative joy. After the road came in the sixties, times changed and it became possible to add a new showroom every ten years.

Here, the contrasts create harmony between the simple and the exclusive, rooster and classical music. Under arched ceilings, modern Scandinavian applied art and handicrafts from faraway regions meet in a fairy-tale ornamented setting.

Today, the operation is taken over by their daughter Sunniva. She is also a goldsmith and works with her own collection.

Like her parents, she relies on a staff of skilled and committed employees. The jewelery is still made in its entirety at the growing site in Kautokeino, and thus carries with it something of the place's vitality and imagination. The workshop can be visited and is part of the facility itself.

Website: JUHLS SILVER GALLERY AS

Johan Sara Jr. is an innovative performer in one of Europe’s oldest song traditions, Sami music from the Arctic, the joik. His unique combination of joik and contemporary elements provides a hypnotic and meditative sound, which has been praised both at home and abroad. His music has confirmed his position as a vital, fresh and genre free innovator.

Johan Sara Jr. was born in Alta and grew up with reindeer herders on the vast snow-covered tundra in the arctic north. He is now settled in the Sami town of Maze. He was born into a culture where nature and the natural was everywhere, a culture where the joik had a central position and had a mother who had a strong interest in maintaining this tradition. To Johan Sara joik is therefore so much more than an artistic expression; it is his history and legacy.

The Sami traditional songs, the joik, took the sounds of nature; the wind, the tundra and the sounds of the animals, and let the Sami shaman, the noaidi, express it as music. It is said about the joik that it has no beginning and no end; it started with the sounds of nature and is in an eternal loop that is ever evolving. Joik is a song tradition involving few words which gives the listeners the opportunity of free associations and spiritual experiences.

Johan Sara Jr. has through his own unique expression continued a thousand year old tradition by adapting the joik to his reality and his contemporary time. Johan Sara Jr. connects the modern to the natural, the sound image of the future with the music of the past and will in this way give his small contribution to make mankind recover the original, the natural and the human. «Everything goes so fast. We no longer have the time to find peace. We have moved so far from the natural that it affects our health, both personal and in relation to how we treat our nature. We need to find peace. In ourselves and with ourselves», says Johan Sara Jr.

Web: Stierdna record label

‍Facebook: Johan Sara Jr

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Olle Blind, Tuorpon Sámi Village Dårajávrre

Olle Blind is recognized for his distinctive crafting style and the use of simple tools to created unique items, notably his horn belts. He is also the brother of Pelle Blind, whose survival story after an accident has become part of the family lore.

Mari Mette Bugge, wife of the highly recognized and skilled craftsman Jon Tomas Utsi, stands out as one of the few but talented female hard crafters within duodji, a field traditionally dominated by men.

Tomas Walkeapää, Karesuando, a former reindeer herder, has demonstrated great skill as a craftsman, particularly evident in the intricate engravings on his full-horn knives.

Egon Eriksson, Moskosel

Lars Levi Sunna, Åresjokk (1934-)

Born in Jukkasjärvi, Lars Levi Sunna, a prominent member of the esteemed Sunna family, integrated his craftwork with a spiritual journey as a priest. His artistic touch in decorating the organ of Jukkasjärvi Church and the other public works in Kiruna, affirms his reputation within Sámi handicraft.

Martin Kuorak, Sirges Sámi Village, Storlule (1940-)

Along with Esse Poggats, Martin Kuorak has been pivotal in the evolution of duodji, whilst firmly maintaining its traditions. Residing in Jokkmokk, he continues to be an active and highly esteemed craftsman.

Nikolaus Fankki, Kaitum (1927-)

As the patriarch of the Fankki crafting family, Niklaos has inspired his sons Erik and Peter, both renowned craftsmen, thus strenghtening the family's legacy in the craft.

Tore Sunna, Åresjokk (1942-)

Tore Sunna, the brother of Lars Levi, is another significant figure in duodji, the Sámi craft tradition. His works are marked by exceptional skill, a trait he shares with his brothers Helge, Knut, and Per.

Göte Lind, Björkbacken, Tärnaby

Part of Vapsleu Sámi Village and a reindeer herder, Göte Lind is noted for his extraordinary crafting skill, despite a limited output of 1-3 handgrips annually.

Hasse Labba stands out as a highly skilled utilitarian craftsman whose works deserve recognition for their finesse.

Per Utsi, Sirges Sámi Village, Vaisaluokta

Per Utsi is the father of Per Ola Utsi, former teacher at the Sámi folk high school, and the grandfather of Ola Magnus Utsi, both carriers of the family's crafting tradition.

Johan Fankki, Kaitum (1920-1999)

Living in a turf hut in Limit and forging his own blades, Johan Fankki is connected to Jon Pålsson Fankki, an icon of knife crafting. Johan's sons, Torsten and Magnus, are also acclaimed within the craft tradition, with Magnus featured in permanent exhibitions.

Per Isak Juusu

Esajas Poggats

Nils Johan Labba

Magnus Fankki

Sune Enokson

Per Omma, Sörkaitum Sámi VillageA Sámi craftsman and reindeer herder, Per Omma was a master in his craft until his passing in 1980.