Finnmark!

Last week I got back from a 10-day field trip to Finnmark -- the northernmost county in Norway. I was as far north as northern Alaska and as far east as Istanbul! During the tour, we drove nearly 2000km, stopped at around 50 different collection sites, and collected thousands of insects! Basically, I was invited to tag along with three other scientists to help out with a biodiversity survey project that is looking at the diversity of certain aquatic insect groups in Finnmark, with goals of being able to document species in the area, describe new species, and have a baseline study that can eventually be used to help monitor effects of climate change on insect populations.

So my days were spent wandering around bogs, lakes, rivers, marshes, and coastlines of Finnmark with nets and other collection gear trying to round up as many chironomids as possible! Much of the inland areas reminded me of northern Minnesota -- gorgeous country! The coastline was rocky, rugged, and for the most part windy and cold! Still very neat to see. Fall definitely comes early to that part of the country. We based ourselves out of four different locations along the way and were put up in everything from multi and single bed cabins, an apartment-like house on the coast, and a national park center with hotel-like accommodations. Most very nice and an improvement upon my dorm-like flat in Trondheim!

A few exciting tidbits from the trip included seeing MANY reindeer (we also had a number of meals which consisted of reindeer... a couple versions traditional Sami reindeer stew, reindeer burgers, reindeer sausage, etc....), eating a fantastic meal of fresh-caught salmon, and seeing Russia ! A number of our sampling points were right across the river from Russia -- some literally a stone's throw away! But, the rules on the Russian border are quite strict -- if you even think of crossing or even making contact with someone on the other side, you get a free pass to jail with a large fine if you want to get out! The good news is though that they don't mind if you take a picture of the other side (as long as you don't do anything offensive or provacative), so I did take advantage of that (see picture below!!). We were quite close to the tri-country border of Norway, Finland, & Russia where they have a nice monument. You can cross the border from Norway into Finland and vice-versa, but if you make a full circle around the monument (which would take all of 2.5 seconds) you go directly to jail without passing go!