A fantastic place. Stories of three women from Ukraine in the Arctic
The Barents Observer traveled to the village of Mehamn in northern Norway to report on a sewing workshop that opened there in early June. And in the end, they found stories of three women from Ukraine who ended up in the Arctic. They got here by different paths, but they all have one thing in common - they lost their home in Ukraine and are now building their lives here, in a tiny but very beautiful fishing village on the edge of the world.
Yulia Anokhina, Yulia Litvinova and Lyudmila Belozerova ended up in the Far North at different times and by different paths. Lyudmila came to Svalbard in 2009, where she worked at the Russian company Arktikugol. Repressions and a full-scale war brought her to Mehamn. Here, Lyudmila works in a store and in her own sewing workshop, where she does design, embroidery, and is also responsible for finances.
Yulia Anokhina has been in the north for almost 10 years, she is in business. Yulia has her own boat, on which she catches fish, her own cafe and store of Eastern European goods, as well as a workshop for servicing fishing gear. Yulia has three children, but she has not seen her middle daughter for a very long time: her ex-husband lives in Russia, where he took the girl from Ukraine without asking his wife’s consent.
Yulia Litvinova came to the north later than everyone else. She is a professional seamstress. Yulia was forced to leave her native Luhansk region when the “Russian world” came there - soldiers without identification marks and separatists. Yulia met the full-scale Russian invasion already on Svalbard, where she went to make souvenirs. Now she is in Mehamn - sewing warm and high-quality clothes.
Their fates turned out to be strangely intertwined - through the Norwegian north, business, love of work, common interests and pain for their homeland.
Film in Russian with English subtitles
