Of cour­se it had been my inten­ti­on for a while alre­a­dy to wri­te again here. But life in Farm­ham­na is main­ly hap­pe­ning off­line, and that is good.

And now the world isn’t any­mo­re what it used to be. The who­le popu­la­ti­on of Farm­ham­na (curr­ent­ly two peo­p­le) is deep­ly sho­cked about the news that reach us here. It would just feel com­ple­te­ly out of place to wri­te about the beau­ty of the natu­re here in the far north and about the simp­le, but good life in a remo­te trap­per sta­ti­on while the world is on fire.

It is about 40 kilo­me­t­res from Farm­ham­na to Barents­burg as the ful­mar flies. We can see the light of Barents­burg reflec­ted by low clouds in cer­tain wea­ther con­di­ti­ons. It is not far at all. Barents­burg is a Rus­si­an sett­le­ment, but with many Ukrai­ni­ans among­st its 300-400 inha­bi­tants. So far, Rus­si­ans and Ukrai­ni­ans were living the­re tog­e­ther peaceful­ly, also after the Rus­si­an occu­pa­ti­on of the Krim pen­in­su­la and the con­flict in the eas­tern Ukrai­ne sin­ce then. How do peo­p­le feel the­re now? How are they, with the know­ledge about the situa­ti­on in their respec­ti­ve home count­ries? Impos­si­ble to ima­gi­ne for me. Sys­sel­mes­ter Lars Fau­se is in regu­lar cont­act with Barents­burg, fol­lo­wing nor­mal rou­ti­nes, and says that it is a “good and nor­mal dia­lo­gue”, wit­hout going into fur­ther detail.

So I finish my con­tri­bu­ti­ons here for Febru­ary with the fol­lo­wing pic­tu­re, which is curr­ent­ly often shared in social media to express the hor­ror about the situa­ti­on, pro­test against the Rus­si­an inva­si­on and war in the Ukrai­ne and com­ple­te digust for tho­se who are respon­si­ble for it.

The Ukrai­ne