January 27th to February 5th this year, I did field work at the 27th edition of the Arctic Winter Games (AWG) in Wood Buffalo/Fort McMurray in the northernmost parts of Alberta, Canada. The AWG is a multi-sport event that takes place every two years in the Arctic regions of the world (usually in even years, but this was event postponed from 2022 due to Covid lockdowns). The games feature a variety of winter and indoor sports, such as ice hockey, skiing, snowshoeing, badminton and futsal, as well as traditional Inuit Games (referred to here as Arctic Sports), Dene Games and cultural events. The games bring together young athletes from diverse cultural backgrounds, Indigenous and Non-Indigenous, offering a chance to examine how different cultural values and beliefs ‘communicate’ in an arena of athletic performance and competition. The participating contingents this year were from Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik/Québec, Greenland and Sapmi.   

I was part of a great international team which (in addition to this one Dane) consisted of one Canadian and two French professors, as well as two French and one Iranian PhD students. Our purpose: to collect piles of data about the games through observations, interviews and a quantitative survey, which will, eventually, allow us to do analysis on if / the extent to which / how / when the games succeed in their purpose to promote cultural exchange, athletic competition, and community engagement among youth from Northern communities around the world. We were formally associated as the AWGs research team, tasked with providing the International Committee (AWG IC) with an evaluation report. The AWG IC generously gave us access to all sports and cultural events, including their own coordination meetings, and assisted us in setting up interviews with organisers, Chefs de Mission and, importantly, participants from all contingents and sports.

Doing field work in minus 35 degrees – minus 45, if you add the windchill -- proved difficult at times. The outdoor opening and closing ceremonies were spectacular but I wish I hadn’t removed my gloves for 60 seconds for taking pictures! Also, breathing out onto my own eyeglasses meant having to leave one event for de-icing before I could again be an efficient observer. Nevertheless, the team managed to collect an incredible amount of data, now awaiting categorizing, transcription, translation and, ultimately, analysis.

The AWG International Committee apparently likes how we went about our research because they already invited us to become associated with the next edition of the games. Hence, attending and doing field work at the AWG 2023 also turns out to be a wonderful opportunity to do some longitudinal studies that include previous CIRCLA research (Carina Ren’s and mine) from the 2016 AWG, as well as future research on the 2024 AWG in Alaska (Mat-Su) in March next year -- just enough time for me to develop and patent efficient on-site spectacle de-icing strategies…