I spent several days with my Saami mistress and her family. She lived in Revda, about eight miles (twenty kilometers) from Lovozero, in the center of the Russian Sami. I tried to extract something from it to share with future readers about Sami culture, history, family values, traditions, clothing and other details from the inside. Even, maybe, to find out some interesting facts about the shaman. The Saami people called these people the Noahs, but this could only happen in a dream.
Despite everything they said to me, I already knew much more than my mistress and their friends. I got the impression that there was no knowledge of Sami culture or history in their family circle. I studied the life of the last aborigines of Europe before my trip to the Kola Peninsula. I really only had one desire to be personal connections and to hear real stories about the lives of their families and ancestors. A lot of time was spent on studying the life of the indigenous peoples of Northern Russia - the Kola Saami.
At my request, in order to learn more about the Sami environment, history, culture and meet other local Sami people, Olga decided to make a trip to Kola Kola in the Kola-Sami. Her family owned a car, and Lovozero was only eight miles away. The village can only be reached by bus or car from Revda, Murmansk or Olenegorsk. Our driver was a family friend, a good young man who was a bodyguard from the secret service. He was here every time I visited her family.
On that day, when we went to Lovozero, the weather brought us luck. It was a beautiful, bright sunny cold but not windy winter polar day. On both sides of the road were stretches of tundra, covered with low-lying shrubs. Occasionally we hung trees with bent trunks that remind us of how wide we were. It was a real indicator of the tundra. I was surprised by the state of the road connecting two small settlements in this part of the country. Even as early in the morning as we drove, the road was suddenly turned upside down from heavy night snow. It was Monday and the road was empty - we didn’t drive past one car or truck. Before we entered Lovozero, I asked to stop the car and take a photo in front of the sign with the name of the village on it; behind me in the photo, you can see a five-story residential building. Behind me are the five-storey residential buildings.
The first known statement about the settlement of Lapps was in 1574 the imperial census taker Vasily Agalin. According to the census beginning in the eighteenth century, about forty people were born in Lovozero. Soon after the imperial census, the Russians began to move to the Lapps area. Komi-Izhemtsy migrated to the region from the banks of the Pechora in 1888 with 5,000 deer. It is simply a matter of colonization of the Komi-Izgems. In 1927, this region was renamed the “Lovozersky District”. Lovozersky district is very rich in clean rivers, lakes filled with fish, forests with lots of animals and endless tundra with grazing deer. It is definitely worth a visit.
The world's largest raw material for rare-earth elements is located in the Lovozero region. This area has unique deposits of kyanite, rare earth metals, platinum, gold, and semi-precious stones. The main industry of the region is non-ferrous metallurgy. Lovozero mining and processing company is made of loparite concentrate. Now the company is in a difficult economic situation. To pay salaries, in 2007 the company was forced to dismantle the railway in order to sell it as scrap metal. This demolition of the Aikuven-Lovozero railway in the tundra was an unspeakable crime - another paradox of Perestroika.
The local economy depends on agriculture, represented by two Tundra cooperatives (in the village of Lovozero) and Olenevod (in the village of Krasnoshchel with branches in the villages of Kanevka and Sosnovka). Their main products are venison. There are also subsidiaries and are engaged in the production of fur products (shoes, clothing and hats), souvenirs made of wood and deer bones. The transport infrastructure of the Lovozero region is very poorly developed.
Lovozersky district specializes in two industries that are not related to each other and located in different parts of the region. The Sevredmet open joint stock company (Revda village) (northern rare metals) is located in the mountainous part of the region and produces loparite concentrate, raw material for tantalum, niobium and rare elements, partly titanium. Before the collapse of the USSR, this company satisfied 70% of the country's demand for rare metals and eighty percent of niobium. The source of raw materials is the unique Lovozero deposit, with underground mines in Karnasurth (since 1951) and Umbozero (since 1984). During the last decade, the facility has faced serious difficulties due to the crisis in product sales.
The Central Kola Expedition continues exploration work in the Lovozersky District. He received a license for exploration in the north-western part of the Kolmozero-Voroninsky structure (Voroninskaya tundra). In addition, a competition has been announced for the development of mineral resources, in particular, for the development of amazonite at the Ploskogorsky deposit located in the Lovozersky district. This is an area traditionally used for reindeer pastures. Scientists have not studied the study of the influence of mineral resources or the exploration and development of biodiversity in the Lovozero region.
The simple part of the Lovozero region is fully used for pastures and reindeer herding. The indigenous population is engaged in this activity after the colonization of the Kola Peninsula. During the collectivisation in the 1930s, two reindeer herding farms were established: the “Tundra” with its center in Lovozero and the “Memory of Lenin” in Krasnoschele. Since then, both farms have been transformed into joint stock companies Tundra and Olenevod. Lovozersky district is the only large territory of the Murmansk region, where reindeer breeding still exists, and the rest of the past areas have already been destroyed by large industrial enterprises or used for military purposes.
Currently, 3,500 people live in Lovozero. Seven of them are Saami. Other Lovozero populations include Russians, Komi and Tatars. Nevertheless, even for visitors it is very easy to detect the visual difference between congenital Saami (short, thick, with great potential) and Komi-Izhort (Stalinka with “European” features). Sami people are commonly used in reindeer herding. There are two schools, two kindergartens, a music school, the School of Arts, the Museum of Culture and the Palace of Arts (working with non-indigenous people). The three local attractions are the local Kovas Hotel, the Sami National Cultural Center and the Sami Culture Museum.
© Rachel Madorski
