Roadlessness and the Person: Modes of Travel in the Reindeer Herding Part of the Kola Peninsula

The article brings into focus the existing state of roadlessness in the reindeer herding part of the Kola Peninsula and the ways in which the local community relates to this feature of the environment. Two primary modes of travel are contrasted: mechanized travel by snowmobiles and all-purpose-track vehicles, on the one hand, and reindeer-drawn sleds on the other. These are related to contrasting perspectives on engaging with the tundra environment: as overcoming an alien and menacing terrain in contrast to accommodating in a place to which one belongs. The influences of a surrounding urban environment, characterized by a post-WW2 period of intensive labour migration, are seen as making the master-trope of “overcoming” the increasingly dominant one. Personhood, constituted on such a basis, is seen to reflect global influences on the local scene. It is concluded that such influences are motivated rather than deterred by a state of roadlessness, thereby highlighting the subtlety of relations between global forces and local outcomes.