JaipurPhoto 2018: Terje Abusdal blends the eerie and humane in Slash & Burn, a project on the Forest Finns
Terje Abusdal’s project Slash & Burn, which was displayed at JaipurPhoto this year, is a study of the magic and mystery of the Forest Finns | #FirstCulture
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“The Forest of the Finns” is a contiguous forest-belt along the Norwegian-Swedish border, where farming families from Finland settled in the early 1600s. All images: © Terje Abusdal. “Slash & Burn”, 2015-2018. Image courtesy the artist and JaipurPhoto 2018
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These immigrants, called Forest Finns, were “slash-and-burn” farmers – an ancient agricultural method that yielded plentiful crops, but required large forested areas and regular relocation, as it quickly exhausted as the soil.
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Their understanding of nature was rooted in an eastern shamanistic tradition – rituals, spells, and symbols were used as practical tools in daily life; which could heal, protect, or safeguard against evil – and they are often associated with magic and mystery.
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The Forest Finn culture of four centuries ago no longer exists, yet many people still feel a deep connection to it.
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Today, the Forest Finns are recognised as one of the national minorities in Norway.
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The only official criterion for belonging to this minority is that, regardless of your ethnic origin, you simply feel that you are a Forest Finn.
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Slash & Burn investigates what it means to both feel like and be a Forest Finn today -
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- and in doing so poses questions about how one’s sense of self, one’s past, and one’s place in the world are as much a matter of feeling as they are of fact.
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