The fear of Russia in Norway goes back far beyond the Russian Revolution. It played an important role in Norwegian Swedish foreign policies towards Russia from the 1830s and up to 1905 (and in Norwegian conceptions of threat between 1905 and 1917 as well, although the threat seems to have been more down-played in that period) (Nielsen 1994 95). In particular, there has been a fear of a possible attack on North-Norway. Roald Berg, in his recently published work entitled Norsk forsvarshistorie 1814-1905 (The History of the Norwegian Defence 1814 1905) presents evidence that the conception of a Russian danger was an issue in Norwegian military considerations as far back as in the 1820s and 1830s. According to Berg, it is evident that this idea was central in Norwegian military-strategic thought in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (Berg 2001: 112 115, 307-308). My purpose in this paper is to try to establish whether there was reason for this fear, that is, if there were any plans among the Russian authorities to conquer Norwegian territory in the period between the Eidsvoll Assembly and the storming of the Winter Palace (1814 1917).

During the Late Middle Ages the combined pressures from the stately tributary organizations of Novgorod and Norway, in cooperation with the capitalist organization of the German Hansa, seem to have driven the hunting population of Varanger in East Finnmark to exploit the wild reindeer resource heavily. The article deals with how a Saami household who lived in a turf house on a peninsula in the present municipality of Nesseby (Unjárgd) dealt with the situation.

“One of the biggest problems of current reindeer herding is the fact that there are only a few women on the tundra. It creates pitfalls for the normal running of reindeer herding. Soviet policy caused women to lose interest in reindeer herding”, recounted a local Nenets reindeer herding administrator. Herders, both women and men, pointed out that Soviet officials effectively displaced women from reindeer herding, and claimed that this has lead to serious problems. The Nenets and Soviet approaches to the life of nomadic herders were diametrically opposed. For the Soviet state, reindeer herding entailed producing meat and hides ‐ a purely economic action ‐ and life on the tundra was seen as backward. The Soviet state viewed the presence of an entire family on the tundra as an obstacle to increasing production. In contrast, for the Nenets the presence of the family was a prerequisite of normal life. Soviet officials implemented a policy to end the presence of women and children on the tundra. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 this policy was abandoned, but there remain practical obstacles for the return of families to the tundra. In this article I will discuss the content of this policy, its impact on the Nenets reindeer herding family, and the role of women in contemporary Nenets reindeer herding.

As one reads the Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen's description of the Inuit of Greenland, one sees clearly that he holds a great deal of respect for their society. The manner in which he presents his findings differs strongly from much of the anthropological and travel literature of the time. In this article, I discuss how it is possible for us to understand Nansen's presentation of the Inuit and other Arctic people.

(1999). Introduction: Acta Borealia special issue on research at the Arctic Centre. Acta Borealia: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 3-6.

Although in poor condition, bone remains from the Saqqaq settlement Niivertussannguaq in the Disko Bay area, western Greenland, represent a great diversity of species. The fragments are distributed among three archaeological structures, but due to great taphonomical influence, the material is not suitable for statistical testing and focus is therefore on qualitative analyses. Finds of white‐fronted goose and harp seal indicate that the site has been inhabited in the summer. However, this does not preclude habitation during winter and it is concluded that further analyses of the remains are necessary before a more detailed evaluation can be made.

With the broadening of the discipline of history to include all groups of actors in a society, it has been suggested that ethnohistory as a separate subfield would disappear and merge into history. This paper, addressed to non‐ethnohistorians, reviews some of the orientations and developments in this particularly North American hybrid of anthropology and history, demonstrating its own progression to assimilating more of the historical perspectives of Native Peoples. It does so, in part, by reviewing the stages in the author's ethnohistoric inquiries for eastern James Bay from records that focused on Cree‐white relations in the fur trade, beginning in the late 1600s. By examining the oral tradition of the Crees and showing its distinctiveness from Western history, this paper concludes that the two fields are incommensurate and will continue along separate paths.