ARSBOREALIS

Visit to Samiland

Director General of the Borderlands Project, Mr. Reynir Adolfsson with his assistant, Mr. Hrafn A. Hardarson, travelled to Kiruna in October 2016 to to meet some representatives of the Sami Council (Samiraad), who had its semi-annual meeting this time there.

Now that the Project is well on its way, with good contacts and collaborators in the Faroe Isles, Greenland, the North-Western Territories it was time to add the Sami nation to it. The Sami nation is spread along the Borderlands in the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. They hold their Samiraad meetings two times a year in the respective countries. This time it was in Kiruna, Sweden, at the Arctic Eden Hotel.

Mr. Adolfsson and Mr. Hardarson introduced the Project to the Board in the presence of interpreters for the Russian speaking representatives. For half an hour they enlightened the Board about the origin of the Project, its aims and purpose and how they see its future with the assistance of the Sami people. They thanked the Samiraad Board for the invitation to introduce this project and to speak about its furtherance during the next few months.

Borderlands - Arctic virtual exhibition

The aim of the project is to give the public and especially children and teenagers an idea of how the aboriginal inhabitants of the Arctic live, how they use their skills to adjust to the cold and barren North. Furthermore we will look in to what the future might hold for the region and its inhabitants. And how this future can learn from their past.

This will be done by the use of interactive, interactive experiences showing their way of life and explaining their solutions to problems they faced in the past and the technology by which they survived and still use. The technology used will be boxes with transparent touch screens in which we will place artefacts of the peoples of the North. In this way we can use both the real and the digital.

Borderlands - Concept document

Arctic virtual exhibition

First exhibition opened in Akureyri

On the 29th of August 2012 Geir Kristinn Aðalsteinsson president of the town council of Akureyri opened the first Arsborealis - Art, Culture and History of the Northern Hemisphere exhibition in Akureyri Art Museum - Ketilhús. The exhibition is a venue in the celebrations that mark the 150 years anniversary of the town Akureyri in the northern part of Iceland.

The exhibition is an introduction to history, culture and art of the people that live in the northertn hemisphere, their isolated life and constant battle with the forces of nature. With the use of multi media it portrays how they use the raw materials at hand to survive and how they have succeeded in using their cultural heritage to make great artwork and fashion items that will hopefully improve the quality of life in the Arctic in the future. Special emphasis will be placed on introducing the exhibition to children and teens because a major factor in the preservation of cultural heritage of the Arctic is to inform its youth.

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Video from the exhibition

Video from the exhibition (in Icelandic)

Maligiaq - An Inuit Qajaq Builder

One of the highlights of the Arsborealis exhibition will be the building of an Inuit kayak by Johnson Maligiaq Padilla who is a master Kayak builder from Sisimiut, Greenland, an Inuit town 50 km above the Arctic Circle on the Davis Strait, Maligiaq will be building a kayak with traditional methods in the first days of the exhibition, explaining how they are built and telling about the different types of kayaks in the arctic region.

Maligiaq was raised by his grandparents, who are from the village of Killiit, a small island off the west coast of northern Greenland. Like most Inuit men have done for thousands of years, his grandfather spent his days hunting seals, whales, birds, and other animals from a qajaq. He began taking Maligiaq hunting with him at the young age of 12 and from his grandfather he learned the traditional hunting methods of the Inuit people, Maligiaq was very young when he built his first qajaq and learned to hunt with it using a harpoon and rifle. He has since built more than 190 qajaqs, some of which are in the collections of the National Museum of Greenland, the Inuit Gallery of Vancouver and the Smithsonian Museum.

Art - Culture - History

On the 29th of August the exhibition Arsborealis - Art, Culture and History of the Northern Hemisphere will open in Akureyri Art Museum - Ketilhús. The Akureyri Town Council is currently celebrating the 150 years existence of Akureyri and is planning to make the exhibition an integral part of the celebration.

Participants will come from Greenland, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Nunawut and Norway. The artistic direction and professional responsibility of the exhibition is in the hands of two individuals with vast experience in this field, and they have staged a number of hand craft exhibitions over the last 10 years. Those are Aðalsteinn Ingólfsson, Art Director, and Björn Georg Björnsson, Exhibition Designer. A future plan is to travel with this exhibition to Copenhagen Denmark, Torshavn in the Faroe Islands and to Nuuk in Greenland in the year 2013.