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Life in the Arctic -

The Arctic tundra that crowns our globe can be a cold and unforgiving place. It may seem incredible, but most of the Arctic Circle is classified as desert, since it receives less than 10 inches (25 cm) of rain each year. Despite these rough conditions, many communities happily call the Arctic home.

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How long have people lived in the Arctic Circle? -

The earliest settlement north of the Arctic Circle, according to radiocarbon dating, appeared around 45,000 years ago in northern Siberia. The only traces of these first Arctic inhabitants are a few lonely bones left over from their hunts. About 13,000 years ago, these early Siberians made the trek across the Bering Land Bridge into North America.

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How many ethnicities exist in the Arctic? -

Today, there around 40 extant ethnicities living in and around the Arctic Circle. From Alaska to Russia and Greenland, nearly four million indigenous people call the Arctic home.

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Inuit -

The Inuit people, whose name in their own language translates to "the People," are by far the most numerous indigenous group in the Arctic. Over 153,000 members of the Inuit community populate the icy environs of Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and the northernmost regions of Denmark.

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Inuit -

The Inuit trace their lineage to the Thule culture that appeared around 4,000 years ago, and crossed into western Alaska from Europe via the Bering Land Bridge. Inuit Sign Language, now used by only a few dozen Inuit individuals in Alaska, is one of very few fully-realized indigenous sign languages, and as a language isolate doesn't seem to have originated from any other preexisting sign language.

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Kalaallit -

A sub-group of the Inuit known as the Kalaallit occupy the icy landscapes of Greenland. They make up the largest ethnicity in Greenland, numbering 51,349 as of 2012.

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Kalaallit -

The Kalaallit people are known to be exceptional artists, and have constructed intricate carvings out of sperm whale ivory since time immemorial. It is also common in Kalaallit culture to pass the time sewing decorative masks out of animal skins.

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Chukchi -

The home of the Chukchi people, the Chukotka Peninsula is the eastern-most point of Asia, only around 31 miles (50 km) from the tip of Alaska.

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Chukchi -

Chukchi customs and traditions can be divided into two groups, commonly known as "Maritime Chukchi" and "Reindeer Chukchi." Those who live by the coast subsist almost entirely on food and resources from the ocean, while groups further inland make efficient use of the groups of reindeer with whom they share their land. The Chukchi are the closest relatives of not only the indigenous peoples of Alaska, but also the Ainu people of northern Japan.

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Sámi -

Native to the European region known as Sápmi, which consists of the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, the Sámi people have fostered their traditional ways of life for centuries. The first historical mention of the Sámi appeared in the works of Tacitus, the Roman Empire's greatest historian, around 98 CE.

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Sámi -

The Sámi people thrive to this day, making a living through fishing and herding reindeer. The Sámi are the only people in many regions of Nordic Europe who are still legally allowed to practice reindeer husbandry.

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Evenk -

As of 2010, the indigenous Evenk people of northern Russia number nearly 40,000, with another 30,000 residing in China. Traditionally reindeer herders, with the fur trade forced upon them by Tsarist Russia in the 19th century, the Evenk people are today at an extremely high risk of cultural extinction.

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Evenk -

Forced further and further from their homeland around Lake Baikal and suffocated by extortionate taxes by both Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, the surviving traditional Evenk communities suffer from a loss of their native language, forced cultural assimilation, and extremely high rates of alcoholism.

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Dolgans -

The Dolgans are descendants of the Evenk, and occupy much of central Siberia. While similar to the Evenk in many ways, they differ in both language and customs. Their name, in the Dolgan language, translates to "tribe living on the middle reaches of the river."

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Dolgans -

For hundreds, if not thousands, of years, Dolgans were semi-nomadic pastoralists who hunted wild game and kept domesticated reindeer. Similar to their Evenk relatives, the rise of the Soviet Union and its scheme of collectivization took a drastic toll on the Dolgan culture.

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Yupighyt -

The Yupighyt, whose endonym translates to "true people," share territory with the Chukchi people on the Chukotka Peninsula. Unlike the Chukchi, the Yupighyt reside almost exclusively along the coastline of Asia's easternmost peninsula, on the surrounding islands.

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Yupighyt -

The Yupighyt, like so many other indigenous communities around the world, are phenomenally skilled artists. Proficient and detailed carvings in whale and walrus ivory are common, and some groups even create "moving sculptures," consisting of many bone and ivory carvings connected and controlled by ropes and pullies to create the illusion of movement within the art.

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Karelian -

Karelians are indigenous people from Finland and western Russia, a region known historically as Karelia. The first historical report of Karelians appeared in Viking texts dating to the 7th century, though they were certainly settled as a distinct ethnic group long before.

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Karelian -

Today, most Karelians in both Russia and Finland are part of the Eastern Orthodox Church, although many traditional folk beliefs have been incorporated into the basic Christian belief system.

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Nenets -

The Nenets people live far above the Arctic Circle in the Russian Far North in both tundra and forest ecosystems. Two distinct languages, known as Tundra Nenets and Forest Nenets, have developed as a result of the varying lifestyles of the Nenets across the Arctic.

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Nenets -

Thanks in part to their isolated homeland, both Nenets languages are still widely spoken within their communities and are taught from birth. Their homes in the deep north, considered inhospitable by prospective Russian and European settlers, has remained mostly safe and undisturbed for centuries, but in more recent years the Nenets have been forced to try to protect their native land from corporate oil giants.

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Aleut -

The eternal inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska, the Aleut people have thrived as fishers and maritime trappers for centuries. Scattered across the numerous Aleutian Islands, they are also excellent navigators.

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Aleut -

The Aleut historical site of Adamagan is famous as one of, if not the, largest indigenous Arctic cities. At its height, it is thought to have accommodated over a thousand residents in around 250 houses.

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Nganasan -

Hailing from Siberia, the Nganasan people are descendants of the prehistoric proto-Uralic ethnicity. As of 2002, there were less than 1,000 Nganasan individuals left in Russia.

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Nganasan -

Throughout their history, the Nganasan people led similar lives to many other Siberian ethnicities, such as the Nenets. One marked difference is that they are semi-nomadic hunters, but never adopted any pastoral habits.

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Pomors -

Pomors, while culturally and ethnically distinct from European Russians, are not exactly indigenous to the Far North. They are the descendants of Russian settlers who came to the area during the 12th century, but remained isolated from the rest of the region and have grown apart from all other Russian groups over time.

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Pomors -

The word Pomor can be translated as "person who lives by the sea." Historically, the Pomor relied greatly on the White Sea, near the western coast of Russia. As of 2020, there were just over 2,000 distinctive Pomors alive in the region.

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Cultures in danger -

Over the centuries and millennia, the indigenous cultures and peoples of the Arctic have faced countless threats to their ways of life. In the past, these threats often took the form of outside societies encroaching on Arctic homelands in the name of expansion and profit. Today, these threats have taken on a new and arguably more dangerous form.

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The cost of climate change -

The innumerable rich and vibrant cultures, customs, languages, and beliefs of the Arctic are put at higher and higher risk with each passing day. The traditional methods of subsistence used by many of these cultures may become unviable as climate change continues to worsen.

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The cost of climate change -

Indigenous communities all over the world, including those near the Arctic Circle, have had to fight against colonialism, corporatism, globalization, and genocide both literal and cultural for centuries. Those battles continue to this day, and while climate change is only another form of these existential dangers, it threatens to take away the very way of life that indigenous communities are fighting for.

Sources: (Wonderopolis) (WWF Arctic Programme) (Smithsonian Magazine)

See also: What's to see within the Arctic Circle?

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