“Indians” in Lapland

The Iriadamant Community, Monocultural Ethos and the Materialities and Geographies of Marginality in Recent Past Finland

Authors

  • Vesa-Pekka Herva University of Oulu
  • Oula Seitsonen University of Oulu
  • Tiina Äikäs University of Oulu
  • Janne Ikäheimo University of Oulu
  • Ilpo Okkonen Studio Ilpo Okkonen

Keywords:

alternative lifestyles

Abstract

This article examines mechanisms of marginalization in the monocultural setting of Finland in the early 1990s through the case of the multinational Iriadamant “lifestyle Indians”. The Iriadamant imitated Native Americans in appearance, and the “tribe” settled in Finnish Lapland to experiment with a non-consumerist ecological and spiritual way of living off-grid. We examine how this community was perceived in Finland and assess how Finnish perceptions of Iriadamant otherness and marginality were anchored on material culture and material practices. Furthermore, we discuss how the marginalization of the Iriadamant resonated and was intertwined with the marginalization and exoticization of Lapland, which is part of the ancestral homelands of the indigenous Sámi and has for centuries been seen as an enchanted land of natural and supernatural wonders. We consider marginality and marginalization in the context of the Iriadamant in Lapland through more specific issues of identity/indigeneity, ecology and spirituality.

Author Biographies

  • Vesa-Pekka Herva, University of Oulu

    Vesa-Pekka Herva is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oulu, Finland. He has studied various aspects of material culture, human–environment relations, cosmology and heritage in northeastern Europe from the Neolithic to modern times. He is the author, with Antti Lahelma, of Northern Archaeology and Cosmology: A Relational View (Routledge, 2019).

  • Oula Seitsonen, University of Oulu

    Oula Seitsonen (Sakarin-Pentin Ilarin Oula), PhD, is an archaeologist and geographer at the University of Oulu, Finland. His research interests are temporally and geographically wide-ranging, from early pastoralism in different parts of the world to the materialities of the twenty-first-century refugee crisis. His recent monograph Archaeologies of Hitler’s Arctic War: Heritage of the Second World War German Military Presence in Finnish Lapland (Routledge, 2020) discusses the northern wartime legacies. Address for correspondence: Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Box 1000, FI-90014 University of Oulu, Finland.

  • Tiina Äikäs, University of Oulu

    Tiina Äikäs is a university researcher in archaeology at the University of Oulu, Finland. Her research interests include archaeology of religion, heritage studies and industrial heritage. She currently leads the project “Smokestack Memories”, focusing on the heritage values and local meanings of factory smokestacks. Her most recent book, co-edited with Anna-Kaisa Salmi, is The Sound of Silence: Indigenous Perspectives on the Historical Archaeology of Colonialism (Berghahn Books, 2019).

  • Janne Ikäheimo, University of Oulu

    Janne Ikäheimo is a Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Oulu. While his dissertation (2003) focused on ceramic cooking pots produced in Roman Africa, his current research interests include “neo-relics” in contemporary society, the early medieval period in northern Finland and the use of native copper in eastern Fennoscandia and northwest Russia during the Neolithic. 

  • Ilpo Okkonen, Studio Ilpo Okkonen

    Ilpo Okkonen is CEO and Art Director of the advertising agency Ilpo Okkonen Studio in Oulu, Finland.

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Published

2022-05-13

Issue

Journal of Contemporary Archaeology

Section

Journal of Contemporary Archaeology

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