Petra Rethmannthe presence of the tundra that calms people. In it one can feel one-
self more clearly. No wonder, then, that Native bands in Labrador,
Canada, for example, have introduced retreats on the land to tackle
issues, such as those related to drinking, that are to be found in vil-
lages and communities.
There is a great deal of silence in the North and, as I have said, it is
hard to put that silence into words. Silence is never quite empty, and
much learning can transpire in quiet moments. So, this is perhaps the
misunderstanding, the trap into which ethnographers tend to fall:
The only thing worth attending to are worlds of sounds: the bark-
ing of dogs, the chatter of people, the noise of the city, and so forth.
In the tundra, it is not so much the words of humans but the sound
of the breaking ice, footfalls on the hardened snow, the gush of riv-
ers, the cries of wild swans, the crackling of grass, the puddles of wa-
ters that grow into ponds, the yelping dogs, the rustling of feathers
in the snow, and so on, that fills the silence. This is not noise. These
are the barely audible sounds that get lost when one’s focus is on ei-
ther the absence of talk or the obsession with verbal communication,
the discomfort that can arise when one is not comfortable with si-
lence. How to describe this silence? And how to make sense of it not
only in an ethnographic but in an existential way (however unpopu-
lar this may be)?
I have thought for a long time that anthropological writings on the
North are underrated. There is perhaps not an immediate lushness
of landscape that grabs one’s attention, and there are even perhaps
not the kinds of theoretical explications that have been attributed to
a former anthropology, a regionally based anthropology (Melane-
sia comes to mind). But notwithstanding some of the terrible polit-
ical and economic conditions of Native living in the North, there is
also a great deal of calmness and peace. That is perhaps the reason it
is so challenging.
For all the time I spent in the Russian tundra, the silence has never
bothered me. I often relished and enjoyed it. But I also recollect times
of discomfort, and the sense of being out of my mind. Even after all
the time that has passed, I remember the panic I felt when I thought
about the necessity, the impending task, to render that silence into an