After touring cities across North America for five years — including Minneapolis, Portland, Albuquerque, Chicago, Tucson, St. Louis, and the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, Iowa — the Sámi Dreams exhibit has been permanently acquired by the Sámi Parliament in Karasjok, Norway, pictured below.

Sami Parliament building is designed with tipi shape to resemble traditional lavvu in which Sami people used to live; Karasjok, Finnmark, Norway. © Randall Hyman

Here is more coverage from my trip earlier this year aboard the expedition ship Helmer Hanssen with researchers who are looking at the biological impacts of steadily increasing artificial and natural light in the Arctic Ocean.

CLICK PHOTO TO READ ARTICLE:

R/V Helmer Hanssen deck hand deploys Frankenstein instrument suite for measuring marine optical qualities during polar night; Svalbard, Norway. © Randall Hyman

When I first interviewed Longyearbyen’s newly elected mayor, Arild Olsen, in late January 2016, jobs were an urgent issue. Seven years later, with Olsen still in charge, climate change has taken center stage instead. Here is Olsen’s view from the top of the world, in the fastest warming town on Earth.

CLICK PHOTO TO READ INTERVIEW:

Colorful homes and buildings line hillside above Longyearbyen harbor in July; Svalbard, Norway. © Randall Hyman

While climate change and environmental justice are key issues for northern Europe’s only Indigenous people, the Sámi, all Arctic peoples are in crisis. Temperatures are rising twice as fast in the High North as the rest of the globe, but climate change can be traced southward across Canada, Alaska, and the American Southwest, where remote Native peoples are feeling the heat as well. Read about how Navajo women are taking matters into their own hands across Arizona and New Mexico.

CLICK PHOTO TO READ ARTICLE:

Arizona state representative Jasmine Blackwater-Nygren, seven-months pregnant, poses in full traditional Navajo attire at her paternal grandmother’s lands southeast of Red Mesa in Sweetwater, Arizona. © Randall Hyman

Few countries have leapt as dramatically from rural to urban as Iceland did in the latter half of the 20th century. The century that began with rural residents outnumbering urban nine to one, closed with 95 percent of the population concentrated in cities—nearly two-thirds in metro Reykjavík. This photo essay highlights a time of rapid change in the 1970s and early 1980s when I lived in Iceland, and many older Icelanders still hailed from farms or tiny coastal villages.That same decade, Iceland unplugged its last hand-operated farmhouse telephone switchboard and bridged the final gap in its ring road, forging a nation where all roads and communications led to the capital.

CLICK PHOTO TO VIEW ESSAY:

Family relaxes atop hay wagon after long day of work near Skalholt Iceland. © Randall Hyman

In late winter, far above the Arctic Circle, Norway’s Finnmark region comes alive as reindeer prepare to migrate from snowy highlands to coastal lowlands to bear young and fatten up throughout summer. The Sámi people have followed this migration for millennia, but their culture is rapidly changing in the face of climate change and globalization. This video features Sámi individuals who are showcased in the traveling exhibit, Sámi Dreams.

CLICK PHOTO TO VIEW VIDEO:

With a soaring career touring the world, Elle Marja Eira borrows from her Sámi roots for songwriting and singing. © Randall Hyman

With a front row seat on climate change, the Sámi have watched as rapid shifts in ecosystems north of the Arctic Circle increasingly threaten their way of life. At the same time, they have leapt from being second-class citizens forced into schools that banned their language, to a semi-autonomous people with their own parliaments in Norway, Sweden and Finland. Read about their lives in their own words in the Spring 2019 issue of Scandinavian Review magazine, and listen to them speak by pointing your smart phone at the QR codes below each person’s words.

CLICK ON PHOTO TO READ ARTICLE:

Aina Emilia Siri Bals, fifteen years old, sits in lavvu, or tipi, dreaming of a bright future, unfettered by her people’s painful past. © Randall Hyman

The Sámi Dreams exhibit has officially opened and is debuting at Norway House in Minneapolis through June 9th!

CLICK PHOTO TO VIEW ANNOUNCEMENT:

As a member of Sami Parliament and a Sea Sami with deep roots along the wild northern coast, Silje Karine Muotka makes her people’s voices heard concerning climate change, marine pollution and indigenous rights. ©Randall Hyman

SEA-ICE ALGAE LEAD MYSTERIOUS LIVES. Some hang like slimy greenish-brown beards from the underside of ocean ice while others thrive in tiny brine channels that form when seawater freezes. Essential to the survival of creatures from tiny krill to penguins, seals, polar bears and blue whales, ice algae are also elusive. That’s why scientists sail to the ends of the Earth to study them, and why I found myself a few years ago peering over the side of the Norwegian research ship Lance, zigzagging toward the North Pole…

CLICK PHOTO TO READ ARTICLE:

Diver from Norwegian Polar Institute research vessel RV Lance swims beneath pack ice with suction device in search of zooplankton samples at 82 degrees north latitude, far north of Svalbard, Norway. © Randall Hyman