On Sunday 5.2.2017 we kicked off our Story collection road-trip from The Museum of Tornio Valley. During the following week, we visited at Pajala, Folkets Hus (6.2.). Hetta, Tunturi-Lapin Luontokeskus (7.2.), at Manndalen Museum of Northern Peoples (8.2.) and at Storslett, Halti Business Garden (9.2.). During our way back home, we stopped at Ylläs, Karila’s Navettagalleria (10.2.).
All events were open to anyone interested to share their own story or to hear about the project. The idea was to collect stories by interviewing people, expected and unexpected stories. The program included also music and oral storytelling performance.
Story themes were different in each region. For example, most of the stories from Pajala were connected to Meänkieli and everyday life in the region. At Storslett people were telling stories about Kven and Sami people living in the northern parts of Norway. Tornio-Haparanda stories were mainly about living on the border of two countries with common history and cultural heritage. All stories collected were individual stories from history to modern days. We met about 300 people on our trip along the Northern Lights Route. It was so nice to see, that people were motivated to share their stories to us.
The crew was combination of partners from Finland, Sweden and Norway, both staff and students. In total our team consisted of 22 members including two folk music bands (JORD and E-City), storytellers (Ihana As), illustrators and film crew from Lapland UAS and SVEFI.
Overall the journey was success and the whole team was happy about the results and the huge amount of collected stories. The biggest challenge is not actual story collection, but how stories will be eventually selected into different productions. This is actually the beginning of everything!
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