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Arctic Peoples - Introduction
Arctic Peoples - Geoantropo
Napapijri and Fabio Pasini, a longstanding collaboration, on a journey of discovery to understand the Arctic through the peoples that inhabit it.
Geoantropo raises the bar.
In recent years we've had some fantastic experiences around the world. We've managed to harness the forces of nature and achieve our objectives. We've explored various territories, mountains, seas and rivers. Thanks to nature, which allowed us to realize our dreams, and thanks to everyone who supported and stimulated us.
We raise the bar in the sense of developing the level of interest in the "anthropic" dimension: the knowledge of peoples and their daily lives. Of all the places we've visited, the Arctic is the one that produced the strongest emotions in us, the one that bewitched us most... and it's to the Napapijri, the Arctic Polar Circle, that we'll be returning to try to understand the "game" that's being played out in these extreme territories and get to know the peoples who live there, their ambitions.
It will be a discovery in stages, it will happen "on the way", as in all great journeys.
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Svalbard
Arctic Peoples - Svalbard
Napapijri and Fabio Pasini, a longstanding collaboration, on a journey of discovery to understand the Arctic through the peoples that inhabit it.
The first leg in our Arctic travels takes us to the Svalbard Islands.
Discovered by Barents in 1596, these islands are so geographically distant and detached from the rest of the world that they were never touched by the major waves of human migration. Located between latitudes 74 and 81 degrees North, they are much more than a land compressed between sea, rock and ice.
After Barents' voyage, the Svalbard Islands became strategically important as a whaling centre, which soon led to the first small settlements.
In the great era of Arctic exploration, in the 19th and 20th centuries, these lands provided a vital bridgehead, for example, for the overflight of the North Pole by the airship Norge and Roald Amundsen's epic attempt to rescue Nobile.
In the early 20th century, the islands began to be occupied and exploited for their coal deposits and small Russian and Norwegian settlements were formed. The Svalbard Treaty of 1925 established Norwegian sovereignty and gave all the signatory states the right to use the islands' resources and to carry out scientific studies. A special clause forbade the building of military bases.
Coal mining is no longer very profitable here. The skeletons of mines testify to the past, while the Russian villages have striven to convert to the more dynamic and modern industry of tourism.
In this Arctic desert – neutral and demilitarised (albeit with slight but constant tension off the coasts) – both land and sea hide massive natural resources, ranging from oil to diamonds, a major source of wealth and opportunities for humanity's future.
Far from armed conflict, the Svalbards have a fairytale atmosphere, and especially in a strange place near Longyrbayen, where a 180 metre tunnel has been dug into the mountain to build a bank. Behind its impregnable doors, seeds from all over the world are being preserved. The objective (dream) is to preserve the world's agricultural biodiversity from the ravages of war and other disasters, to perpetuate the planet's genetic heritage.
The Svalbards are also home to one of Norway's most important universities, the ideal point of departure for studying the Arctic and some of its more disparate aspects. Unis is an international centre that attracts academics from all over the world: they come here to prize out the secrets this land is still hiding and testify to how much of the future of our planet will necessarily depend on the Arctic.