Paper short abstract:

Based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Arjeplog, rural Northern Sweden/ Swedish Sápmi, this highly visual paper investigates how the freezer is critical in everyday sustainability and prosperity, arguing that it is a vital element of not just survival, but ideas of the good life.

Paper long abstract:

The modern home freezer has revolutionised food storage, advancing traditional techniques of preservation towards new materialities of modernity. Based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork and image co-production in Arjeplog, in rural Northern Sweden/ Swedish Sápmi, this highly visual paper investigates how the humble freezer plays a critical material role in the everyday sustainability and prosperity of the community. In Arjeplog, fishing, the moose hunt (älgjakten), the bird hunt, and reindeer meat from local herders is a crucial part of life. The majority of protein is consumed from the local landscape, building on these traditional practices that provide meat and fish throughout the year. While previously preserved through salting, drying, curing and smoking, the introduction of the modern freezer into Arjeplog life has changed these material practices. Today, neatly packaged fish, berries, reindeer cuts, moose meat, and entire bird carcasses fill the electric freezers of the locals until the promise of the hunting season sparks an emptying in anticipation of new bounty. These hunting and foraging practices are framed as sustainable ways to procure first-class sustenance for the entire year directly from nature, following an ‘eat local’ approach that locals often argue is missing from the urban Swedish population. Using original photographs from fieldwork that work together with the text to explore the materiality of the freezer in everyday practice, I argue that the freezer is a vital element of not just survival, but prosperity and ideas of the good life.