Methodology and Interpretation A crucial aspect of a fruitful relationship proved to be not only the ensuring of a material return in the form of the results of the project, but the physical return of the researcher himself or herself. The people have experienced many foreigners coming and going and getting quite superficial impressions about life in the indigenous settlements or taking data and producing scientific knowledge about which the people have no idea. Just coming back after an initial informal tea drinking and getting to know each other another day for a proper interview proves that the researcher is not one of those kind of researchers who just drops by, asks silly questions, and leaves. Several periods of fieldwork over the following years will capitalise on that effect. When going beyond the stage of a superficial encounter, one must overcome a serious obstacle experienced by everyone doing interviews in the former Soviet Union, namely, the problem of how to overcome the official discourse when a foreigner is present. A similar problem is avoiding the hierarchy of perceived historical competence that is associated with the researcher as a scientist. Both make people fall silent who do not feel competent in giving an official legitimated version of the past. Several times, when asking people whether I could record their life stories for an oral history project, they replied to me that their lives had no connection to history and that they did not think they would have anything worthy to tell me. I learned to avoid the term “history” completely and tried to ensure that I was interested in their personal experiences and life circumstances. It was important to evoke the feeling of competence and legitimation in some interview partners, who were first reluctant but then proved to be the most important interlocutors. This was only possible due to the proof that the researcher was able to understand the context of a reindeer herder’s experiences and that he had competence in the lifestyle himself. The subsequent conversations were always an exchange of stories. The interlocutors did not only demand an explanation of the scientific outcome and of the practical relevance of the researchers’ work but were also interested in the personal experiences of the researcher among northern indigenous groups. Some just wanted to exchange information about the lives of their neighbours for purposes of comparison. In this context it is also of utmost importance to prove that
67