With a background in social anthropology, sociology and cultural studies, Kathryn’s research interests include the mediatization and representation of remote and island spaces; identity, ecologies and place narratives of Scotland’s rural communities, coasts and islands; cultural work, precarity and creative enterprise; Scottish cultural heritage and arts contexts including Gaelic and Scots for applied creative practice; sustainable communities, resilience, development, entrepreneurship, cultural policy and the commons in small island, remote, peripheral and rural contexts. Current external activity includes UWS representative on the Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design Network (ASAD); and Kathryn is an organising group member for UK wide MSIG in Participatory and Collaborative Methods. Contact: kathryn.burnett@uws.ac.uk
Living in the Landscape (LILA 2024) Methods Summer School at Vuotso, Lapland. Students from across the ASAD network worked on tasks in the landscape focusing on “green energy” across several sites including here at Vuotso, Lapland.
Vuotso Forest CC-BY EalaCreative
Working together for #UWS #EalaCreative Scotland in LILA 2024 Methods Summer School
Illustration page showing Lapland Bunting (left) and Snow Bunting (right) Image: n341_w1150Birds of Britain London,A. and C. Black,1907.[etc.]1883-85. by Biodiversity Heritage Library. Public Domain at Flickr
May the 4th (#StarWars Day) 🙂 is usually a day for all things intergalatic but we also like to find about things nearer home, as well as those species that have a shared heritage across the northern regions.
At EalaCreative we are exploring how to work with archives and digital collections as resources for learning and creative inspiration. This image of two ‘bunting’ birds -Snow and Lapland – is from the Biodiversity Heritage Library available online. For some info on Scottish birds see for example the page posted here by The Scottish Ornithologists’ Club (SOC) on snow bunting sightings in Scotland.
In the Cairngorms – a mountainous tundra climate plateau region in Scotland – a number of ‘Arctic’ and -sub-Arctic species are found including the snow bunting. See here for more information on the Norsk Polarinsk resource site where you can listen to the song of the Snow Bunting, Svalbard’s only ‘songbird’.
“The snow bunting is the most northerly passerine bird in the world. It breeds in a circumpolar range, south to Scotland and Iceland, and it is a common breeder in suitable habitats in northern Scandinavia, Greenland, Svalbard, arctic parts of Russia and the northerly parts of North America.”
See also a like below for a Wildlife Photography video available on YouTube of Snow Bunting in the Cairngorms.
“904 views 6 May 2019 4th May Scottish highlands, a couple of days snow brought the Buntings down from the high tops of their breeding grounds, They are a scarce breeding species in the UK, in Scotland around 60 pairs, in winter numbers can be 12,000 birds up and the UK”. “Wildlife Photography Snow Buntings highlands of Scotland”. “
Tuonela – the realm of the dead – is the setting for the Kavela’s mythic hero Lemminkäinen‘s fate. Read more here about this famous Finnish tone poem by Sibelius The Swan of Tunela.
Tuonela. 1934 by Paul Landacre Born: Columbus, Ohio 1893 Died: Los Angeles, California 1963 wood engraving on paper sheet: 16 5/8 x 10 1/2 in. (42.2 x 26.8 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Museum Purchase 1982.95.1. “Tuonela” by americanartmuseum is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
You can read much more on this epic tale as the inspiration for Jean Sibelius, – Finland’s famous music composer – composition – the Lemminkäinen Suite – here.
The Kalevala – Finland’s national ‘story epic’ and work by artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela will be forever entwined.
You can read more about these links between ‘ancient stories’ and ‘modern times’ in an essay by Michael Hunt (2019), for the exhibition The Kalavala – In Other Words.
Elsewhere you can read more about “an alternative Kalavela” and research by Juha Pentikäinen, Professor of Modern Ethography at the University of Lapland. Juha Pentikäinen‘s research includes a focus on the deeper shamanic roots of the Kalavela’s folktales. See also here a discussion on the Kalavela’s philosophy, its story roots as ‘deep knowledge’ and links to folk healing.
“Tuonela is described as being at the northernmost part of the world but is sectioned apart from the world of the living by a great divide. In the divide flows the dark river of Tuonela. The river is wild, and the dead can be seen trying to swim across it. The dead must cross the river, either by a thread bridge, swimming, or taking a boat piloted by the daughter of Tuoni.[1] The river is guarded by a black swan that sings death spells.” Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuonela
The Finnish word for swan is joutsen. The word derives from jousi, the Finnish word for arrow.
Celtic Swans and Children of Lir in the Cairngorm National Park
Scottish and Irish mythology – a ‘Celtic mythology’ also features swans and here is a link to the famous Finnish story The Swan of Tuonela (and also a mention of the Irish story ‘The Children of Lir‘) as told by “The Irish in Finland”.
Finally, find a storytelling link here to the Scottish links to this folktale of the swan Children of Lir that includes a link to the history of Insh Church (the chapel of the swans) as told by Scottish musician Hamish Napier. The children turned to swans – as it is told here – flew between Ireland and Scotland for nine hundred years before eventually – on being turned back to their human form – they crumble to dust. Find some more information on Insh Church at the Am Baile Highland archive collections site. The church is near Loch Insh in Badenoch, located in the Cairngorm National Park in Scotland’s highlands. Nearby to the church is Insh Marshes a national nature reserve rich with ecology and wildlife as”one of the most important wetland areas in Europe”.
We like to point out that the EalaCreative team might well need to explore a little more the links to botanicals such as juniper! Berries for knowledge is an ancient theme we might discuss elsewhere!
Both our Arctic and Scottish creative industries and cultural economies include long histories and shared connections across brewing and distilling. These sectors offer key shared experiences and exchange of knowledge production in regard of biodiversity, design and quality with the Arctic and circumpolar regions. Biodiversity, sustainability, creativity and social wellbeing are just some of the aspects that offer conections for research and creative practice in regard of our food and drink cultures and economies across Scotland and the Arctic.
Juniper and Scots Pine Research … #EalaCreative Scotland Arctic Distilled – creative practice and landscape taskscape “EALA” gin made with collected pine needles from the Trossachs forest, Scotland and show poured into a ‘circumpolar’ glass, a gift to visiting delegates to a previous Relate North ASAD thematic event held at ULapland. Image by EalaCreative (CC-BY-SA)
In Finland, for example, although only one species of juniper grows here it is widespread. Juniper is traditionally used in various containers, centrepieces and utility articles as well as medicine. The smoke of juniper and the berries are also used as seasoning. Source: https://puuproffa.fi/
The EALA project is a OER connections project based at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) and working in creative practice and arts pedagogy partnership with the University of Lapland. The EALA project was funded by the Scottish Government’s Arctic Connections Fund 2022-2023 to explore and expand Scottish and Arctic creative contexts and commons.
EalaCreative – the working group of participants – have used the symbol of the swan – jousten (finnish); eala (scots gaelic) – as a theme for our cultural, environmental and socio-ecological pedegogy focus.
In Finland the swan holds a very special symbolism for the nation and this Tuonela swan myth is explored by the EALA creative project team here.
We have looked west, south and east in our focus on looking north! This post speaks a little more to looking west and the islands of the Outer and Inner Hebrides.
Energy “at the margins” – powercuts! Across the islands of Scotland’s west swans (most usually Mute Swans) are often seen flying high overhead as they migrate but so too they might fly low and occasionally power would be lost (“powercut“) as they might fly into the electricity cables that hung from the wooden poles across the islands’ moorland. In Uist in the Hebrides to the west of Scotland, for example, it might occasionally happen that a “downed” swan might be found dazed and slightly disorientated in the narrow water course channels of the intricate loch and peatland bogs and the land drainage systems. Having hit the wire the swan might rest and recover in these low lying bogs and ditches.
Elsewhere across the cultural history of Scotland and other landscapes and nations the swan is a symbol of life long partnership. Images of swans paired together consumed with their ritual return nesting habitats are common across digital resources and informed our EALA logo design.
Archives and Wildlife Science
In exploring the open accessible resources available online (creative commons) for images of swans at South Uist at Loch Bee we discovered the work of Dr Mary Gillham, a wildlife scientist. An archive project offers her collection of photographs for others to view and re-use and includes many images taken in Scotland, but also in regions such as Antartica:
“Dr Mary Gillham MBE (1921 – 2013) was a pioneering naturalist and prolific wildlife author, who took an active interest in the environment for over 80 years. In 1959 Mary was a member of the first Antarctic expedition to include women scientists,”Dr Mary Gillham Archive Project
Below is just one image from Dr Gillingham’s archive – an image of Loch Bee on South Uist, Outer Hebrides. Although rather difficult to see the swans in the distance (small white dots on the dark blue water) the image offers a sense of the area’s assets low lying natural ecology of the loch, alongside its working landscape that includes crofting (cattle are seen grazing), estate management (loch fishing), and the ‘open skies’ of the islands north Atlantic ‘periphery’ situation for the nearby defence missile testing site (the”rocket range”) Range Hebrides. A view of a rusting oil drum can be seen lying in the peat moorland bog in the foreground.
Cloudberry ground, Flå, Norway by Thor Edvardson (CC-BY-NC-ND -2.0) at Flickr
“The bright Northern summer ripens a luscious harvest of berries in the forests and bogs every year, which anyone who spends time in nature can benefit from. Even a relatively poor crop will yield approximately 100 kg, or 20 buckets, of wild berries per person in Finland. Approximately 50 varieties of wild berries grow in Finland, of which 37 are edible. Of these, around 20 varieties are suitable for picking and consumption. The best known and commercially most valuable berries are lingonberries, crowberries, bilberries, cloudberries, raspberries, cranberries and sea buckthorn.”
Watch a video here on the Nordic Diet that speaks of fish, rapeseed oil, oats and berries. Berries are considered to be particularly special – especially linked with various health claims and the maintaining of good health but also potentially impacting on a whole range of illness and disease.
Watch a video here on Finland’s forest and swamp assets and the importance of the berries resource available there.
Image credit : Shetland Arts (CC-BY-ND-2.0) at Flickr Timo Jokela exhibition, Feb 2010 – schools workshop the gallery – Lunnasting II
“Today, the Arctic is developing into an important hub of the twenty-first century; industrially, socially and politically. We believe that the economic potential of the region should be harnessed in a way that brings prosperity and guarantees the livelihood and social-cultural progress of Arctic inhabitants and communities.”
At our EALA Project sharing site we aim to connect and create materials and resources for a focus on ‘north’ art and design for sustainability and connections between Scotland and the Arctic. What is North – as Jokela and Coutts (2018) have detailed below – can and does include regions that are experienced ‘as north’, as well as northern parts of countries. We are especially keen to direct interested readers and creative content makers to the UArctic ASAD thematic network resources available for research and learning. Editors of the Relate North series Timo Jokela and Glen Coutts talk below of the importance of testing and developing new art and design methodologies via the UArctic ASAD network, and other key art education connections including InSEA (see the recently published RelateNorth #9DOI: 10.24981/2022-RN#9).
“… we explore the notion of the North1 and the Arctic as a ‘laboratory’ of art and design education for sustainability. The chapter is organised in three sections, the first is a discussion of the idea of northern conditions as an environment for testing and developing new art and design methodologies. In particular, we are interested in how art might address the effects of rapid changes in the social, cultural and economic setting and post-colonial situation of the area.”
When we refer to the North we mean the northern part of the world on the northern hemisphere or northern parts of specifc countries, for example northern Canada, Scandinavian and Nordic countries and countries around the Circumpolar North and regions rather than simply the direction in which a compass normally points.
Image credit Shetland Arts (CC-BY-ND.2.0) at Flickr Timo Jokela @ Bonhoga Gallery, Weisdale Mill, Shetland. 13 Feb – 7 March 2010.
Sharing platforms such as Flickr creative commons offer digital facilities for individuals and organisations to upload and share their images and content for wider re-use based on various ‘Creative Commons’ licence conditions. Examples can include images taken of places, events -such as this image above by Shetland Arts – or artefacts and can include images shared by both professional and amateur photographers, as well as researchers, archivists, policy champions and many others in many roles. You can read more about Flickr here.
Arctic Nature in Lapland, Finland by Niara (CC-BY-2.0) at Flickr Utsjoki to Rovaniemi There are bogs, forests, lakes, rivers, rocks, fells, fields, water in Finnish Lapland. The photo was taken from the bus. Some of these photos are taken from the bus between Utsjoki and Rovaniemi.
The image above of swans flying over Loch Insh is by the photographer Charlie Marshall. The EalaCreative team selected this striking image as representative not just of the swans who migrate to and from Scotland and circumpolar regions but also in this case, as the photograph is from Loch Insh, to connect here to a particularly special place and landscape – the Cairngorm mountain region in north-east Scotland. This mountainous area, with forests including large tracts of Scotland’s ancient Caledonian woodland, and freshwater lochs of snowmelt, is notable as being an area of mountain plateau of alpine and tundra like climate and ecology, a unique landscape in the whole of the British Isles.
“The Cairngorms provide a unique alpinesemi-tundramoorland habitat, home to many rare plants, birds and animals. Speciality bird species on the plateaux include breeding ptarmigan, dotterel, snow bunting, golden eagle, ring ouzel and red grouse,[6] with snowy owl, twite, purple sandpiper and Lapland bunting seen on occasion.[40] Mammal species include red deer and mountain hare,[6] as well as the only herd of reindeer in the British Isles. They now roam the high Cairngorms, after being reintroduced in 1952 by a Swedish herdsman. The herd is now stable at around 150 individuals, some born in Scotland and some introduced from Sweden; since the individuals depend on humans for food and come from domesticated stock, they are not considered wild.[7]
The Cairngorm area is named after one of its main mountain peaks Cairn Gorm and the wider area most espcially in leisure and tourism terms is more often referred to as ‘The Cairgorms’. The region is now a designated national park (Scotland’s second) and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). More information on this can be found here NatureScot and a detailed summary of this Cairgorms SSSI can be downloaded from the NatureScot site, including the vegetation of alpine moss-heath, sedge and rush vegetation ‘communities’:
“The Cairngorms has the largest tracts in Britain of a range of alpine moss-heath and associated sedge and rush communities developed on base-poor granites and schists and the full range of these communities. The community characterised by three-leaved rush is particularly well developed, with the full range of subtypes varying from those where woolly fringe-moss Racomitrium lanuginosum is co-dominant to open tussocky, lichen-rich areas. Extensive areas of the plateau are dominated by stiff sedge Carex bigellowii and woolly hairmoss, particularly on the western spurs and ridges.”
Co-designing the EALA logo for EALA project by Bingrui Sui CC-BY-2.0 at Flickr
I was very happy when I knew that the shape of the EALA logo I was going to design was to be a swan. In the year or so that I have lived in Ayr, the wildlife I have seen often, and found most memorable, are the swans on the river. They are free to feed and play in the river in groups every day. In creating a graphic for the EALA project – with the name EALA the word for swan in Scottish Gaelic – I was inspired by the birds on the Ayr River, taking time to watch them and to sketch and model the creation of some ideas for an image. In terms of my developing of the initial design by EALA project lead for a swan shape logo, the first thing that came to my mind is the classic version of Swarovski swan logo image. In this logo, the swan wings are made of a bunch of dots, which makes the whole logo very elegant. But I wanted to design the image of the swan as a little more closer to life, and most especially I wanted to reflect the lively and flexible aspect of the swan’s movement. As for the final presentation form of this EALA logo, I choose to use strong lines for the outline. Because the simpler the shape, the easier it is for the viewer to remember. The lines created a sharp yet elegant feeling. In the design of the swan’s body shape, I gave the swan a rich and ‘full’ outline as observing the swans in the Ayr River impressed upon me this sense of fulllness, that they were ‘fat’. Fat is not a bad word, it reflects the swans’ freedom, unfettered, and that their living environment is good. The silhouette of the swan’s tail and wings is the highlight of the logo and the ‘punchline’ of the whole design. When I sourced various logo cases of swans online I found that most of the swan logos are dedicated to showing the posture of swans when they open their wings, depicting the wings of swans straight and high, just like the brilliance of a peacock. I found that swans spread their wings when bathing, fighting, and mating and I was drawn to this and learned much more about the nature of these birds. Working with the EALA lead (Kathryn A. Burnett) in Scotland we spoke about the design concept of our EALA logo and the idea of cultural links and partnership. The two swans being mirrored in the graphic logo represent Scotland and Finland respectively and how we are producing content about both Scotland and the Arctic under the commons of friendly cooperation. I chose the pose of a swan with its wings slightly spread. I like the upward tail of swans very much. The upward tail makes the overall flow shape of swans very smooth, and matches well with the long neck of swans, reflecting the graceful posture of swans. In terms of colour choice, I spoke to Kathryn and we explored both the colours of both Finland and Scotland’s flag. Both have a wonderful blue colour but in the end as I decided to use the blue from the Scottish flag as the outline colour of the swan as I personally now love the blue of the Scottish flag; it is very bright and vibrant. And for the swan’s beak I used orange to style the beak but it also works quite well to distinguish it from the blue, and the swan graphic looks more vivid, and with a more distinctive look.
River Ayr UWS campus landscape By EALA Project CC-BY-2.0 at FlickrBy Bingrui Su, MA Creative Media Practice, University of the West of Scotland
EalaCreative 