David Hay Jones talks about Porjus, Jokkmokk, Laponia, Lapland, Sweden, Scandinavia

DHJ: My first visit was a 19-year-old city boy who loved wild places. I was drawn to the glaciated mountains, a place called the Sarek National Park in Sweden (which is now part of the Laponia World Heritage Area), about 50 km north of the Arctic Circle. It's uninhabited, vast and impressive for Europe. Over the years, I have become interested in the boreal forest, east of the Scandinavian mountain chain, and that's where I settled. I used to own a nature photo gallery, Galleri 47, in the old railway station in Porjus. I exhibited images of Arctic light and color there. Then I lost interest in catering to tourist tastes and wanted to return to serious creative work, making a good living by writing and taking photographs.

I have seen bear, moose, wolverines and lynx in Lapland, and that made a big impression on me. What else? Lapland has a harsh winter climate with weeks or months of darkness, which I'm attraced to. There are few distractions, which can make it a demanding place to live. It's a refuge for those of us who are maladapted to suburban life and the corporate game.

Question: You seem to have a romantic notion of Lapland?

DHJ: Yes, very much so: romantic and idealized. At 19 you're impressionable; if you find a place or author or artist that you like, the fondness can last for years. You develop a loyalty. But Lapland is far from ideal for those who don't share my interests. I'm aware of its drawbacks and problems. The service level is close to zero if you compare it with America. There's hardly anything in the way of entertainment, and eating out is ridiculously expensive. Simple tasks such as shopping for groceries can become a chore in winter if you live miles from town. Those who thrive in the boonies of Lapland are self-reliant and skilled at practical tasks. And they value and enjoy their freedoms. It doesn't matter that the mvie theater is 30 miles away. Everyone has satellite tc these days.

Question: What freedoms?

DHJ: I value the freedom of access to vast areas of unspoilt land, not having to request permission to travel across that land, not needing a permit to camp on it, make a fire on it, spend time on it. And to know that there's enough land for a whole lifetime of exploring. I'm a loner and like to explore places on my own; it deepens the experience. There's no insistence in Lapland that you join a guided group; you're free to enjoy the place in the way you want. Then there's the freedom of dressing how you want for the encounter with the wilds. You don't have to become a GoreTex warrior, a wearer of the latest gear, but you can, as I often do, venture into the forest in a 15-year-old overall and rubber boots, an old army backpack with a axe, box of matches, bread, coffee pot, smoked reindeer meat, perhaps a rod and line. And you camp by a river. You begin to value time, huge portions of it that no one but you commands over. Restlessness disappears; you find an inner calm. That's the freedom I am talking about, a practical, concrete freedom, not a theoretical one.

Question: You have a very spiritual way of talking about Lapland.

DHJ: Quite the opposite I think. Mine is a practical appreciation of wild places, wild animals, wild weather.

Question: Aren't the qualities you talk about spiritual?

DHJ: I don't think so. I am not much interested in such matters.

Question: Were you at all attracted to the way of life of the indigenous people, the Sami?

DHJ: Only superficially. My attraction is to landscape, to shapes, the arrangement of shapes and lines, seasonal contrasts, to scale of landscape, the knowledge that it goes on and on for hundreds of miles. I like wolves, wolverine and lynx -- which the indigenous people do not because wolves and other predators kill and eat reindeer. For me, the big predators symbolize a certain type of landscape, the wild and unruly. That's why I also like mountains, glaciers, old growth forest. As I said, I like to live and work alone, don't derive energy from groups or clubs or gatherings. I admire and respect the Sami for the way that they have survived in Lapland for hundreds and hundreds of years, that they have not used violence to resist colonialization, and have kept their language and culture intact, but I am not much attracted to their lifestyle. I wouldn't want to be a reindeer herder or a fulltime fisherman or handicraftsman. I wouldn't want to have the lifelong ties to one region that having a reindeer herd would demand. And I would not want to be placed in the position of wanting to, or having to, kill wolves or wolverines because they are attacking my herd.

Question: Were you a photographer when you visited Lapland as a 19-year-old?

DHJ: Not professionally but I was interested in photography. I saw myself more as a writer. Photography was a way of illustrating articles, of making notes to remind me what a place looked like.

Question: Were you interested in landscape and nature photography?

DHJ: Faced with a place that's nothing but landscape, or where landscape is stronger than the human ability to shape it, where the towns and villages are dull, it's natural that your first photographs are of mountains, forest scenes, etc. But as a young man I enjoyed walking, skiing and scrambling over mountains more than I did stopping to photograph them.

Question: Were you influenced by any photographers?

DHJ: Not directly. I was aware of Ansell Adams. I found his work to be beautiful but sterile, like a perfectly executed somersault. Perfect technique -- which appeals to nature photographers -- and a genuine love of place but, I am sorry to say, the photographs don't speak to me. I'd say that almost all nature photography is sterile and conservative because it deals in the illusion of untouched space. There are fence posts, powerlines, roads, cellphone masts, signs of human activity almost everywhere we look, even in the wilderness, and yet nature photography has a desperate need to hide that fact, to pretend that there are vast areas untouched by humans. I see nothing wrong in nature shots showing high voltage powerlines marching across the countryside.

Question: Are you saying that there is no true wilderness left, not even in Lapland?

DHJ: I am saying that the word wilderness is often a marketing trick used by the tourist industry. It's also a way of defining the absence of a specific kind of human activity. If there's no industry, no towns, then it's wilderness. Lapland has been inhabited for thousands of years by hunters, trappers, reindeer herders, fisherman. By calling the place wilderness we deny that history, we say it doesn't amount to much.

Question: From an urban perspective, it doesn't amount to much. Wilderness is simply the absence of the urban.

DHJ: These days I suppose it is. The definition has shifted. We are becoming more and more urban, and less and less tolerant of places without urban service and comfort. A visual and mental laziness has crept in too. A city person driving south to north through Lapland might say, "It's dull, there's nothing but trees". But such a person is only talking about a slice of landscape seen from the road. They also, because they are traveling at speed, fail to notice different varieties of trees, or the way in which spruces on bogs and marshes are different from spruces on drier ground.

Question: Does this mean that rural dwellers are more in tune with their surroundings than city folk?

DHJ: No. People adapt to the environment in which they live. City life demands its own skills. Fire-making, handling a boat, using a chainsaw, have little or no place in city life. But you develop other survival skills. You learn the best spot to stand on station platforms in the rush hour, so that when the train pulls in you'll get a seat. You learn how to walk fast in overcrowded streets, never bumping into people. You learn how to cross very busy roads without getting knocked over. All of those skills demand intelligence and adaptability: it's like Crocodile Dundee in reverse.

The problem I find is that there's an assumption that the city way is the only way, and that city lives and suburban lives are the only ones worth having. I used to organize survival and wilderness living courses in Lapland, but I stopped after some years because of the participants' whining and inability to endure hardship for a couple of days. City life is good in hundreds of ways but it has softened us.

Question: Do you prefer wilderness life to city life, Lapland to London?

DHJ: That's a choice that doesn't need to be made. This isn't our parents' or grandparents' generation. We don't need to make a commitment to stick with one location, or one job, all our lives. I have noticed that many people are becoming skilled at adapting to different environments, switching between town and country, home and abroad, crowds and solitude. In the west, we have the luxury of those choices.

Question: Are you an environmental activist?

DHJ: That's a tricky question. There is a conservatism in the environmental movement that I don't like. It's almost a denial of evolution, desiring the environment to be static. There's also a phoney worship of indigenous cultures, as though pre-industrial lifestyle is somehow more satisfying and more "in-tune" with nature. And yet, I advocate protecting wilderness areas from exploitation; there should be large areas free from mining, oil exploration, exploitation by the tourist industry, where we allow wild animals to remain wild. I think wildness, of place and mind, is of great vaue. Indigenous people must also be assisted in their desire to live and thrive where they wish to do so. We must stop trying to wipe out their various ways of life. I also think that industry has had a free ride for too long, polluting where it wants to, exploiting where it wants to, and that needs to be regulated. But I think industry can and will improve in time: it's happening. In the very, very long term, I don't hold out much hope for the preservation of big mammals which require huge areas of land. In time, the wild wolverines, lions, elephants and rhinos will be wiped out: they'll remain only in game parks and zoos.

Question: That's a somewhat depressing view.

DHJ: I don't get depressed about it. People get what they want. Most people, from what I have seen, love the idea of wildness, of wild animals, of wilderness, but they rarely visit such places, and when they do, they want the visit to be convenient, with flushing toilets, good food, soda machines, motorized transport. They want accessible wilderness, which they get in game parks. The urbanized, computerized, entertainment industry way of life is taking over more and more, and people seem to love it. They don't like, and don't want, discomfort. My travels also tell me that the people who haven't got a modern, urban lifestyle, well, they want it badly. They'll kill any number of lions or wolves to own a tv, a computer or a cd-player.

Question: For a while you turned your back on the city and tried to become a purist nature photographer.

DHJ: I didn't turn my back on the city, but I was offered a contract to write a book about Lapland ('Night Times and Light Times' published by Hamish Hamilton). And after doing the research for the book, I liked the place so much I wanted to live there. Then came the difficult part: making a living. I started to photograph what was there and by getting into nature photography, the established, respected version of it, I found out it had its own strict rules, eg you have to use a tripod, slow film, no human presence, front-to- back sharpness, saturated colors. You were expected to observe all of those stifling commandments.

Question: You think that nature photography needs to loosen up?

DHJ: It can do what it wants to --- and it has a dedicated following just as it is. But nature photography has often mistaken technical proficiency for art. To be considered good at nature photography, all you have to do is take sharp, colorful photographs of whatever is out there. Landscape and skyscape photography is very easy. You don't need much technical know-how: just point your camera at the sky and take the picture. It's much more difficult to photograph people, especially when they're moving and you want them to be beautifully lit. Nature photography is remarkably uncreative: it seeks to document, and if it adds it does so by enhancing colors, by prettifying. It's probably the branch of photography with the biggest amateur input, and that drags down the quality of the work. Amateurs are notoriously conservative.

Question: Do you consider yourself a Laplander?

DHJ: I'm a foreigner and a guest. Lapland is one of my homes but I'll never be a Laplander. Foreigner are always foreigners in such places. I am not one of those tourists who imagines that he can fit seamlessly and unnoticed into a different culture. Of course, you should learn the local language and be able to negotiate the various customs, be aware of differences in worldview from your own, but there is little point in aiming to be what you're not. People who think they can fit in and not be noticed are kidding themselves. In the early days of anthropology there was a belief that you could sit there with your tape recorder and notebook and observe people without your presence having any effect on them. That, of course, is nonsense. The observed, or visited, people develop very sophisticated strategies for dealing with visitors and outsiders. As long as the cameras are rolling and there is money to be made, local people are prepared to be what tourists want them to be.

Question: What does Lapland give you now compared to the 70s when you fist visited?

DHJ: It gives me a significant part of my income. There is so much scientific research going on there, into climate change, into the atmosphere, that I am kept busy. It is also a place where I am able to work and write in peace. I can think clearly there. The phone hardly ever rings, the tv is so bad it's not worth watching other than as background. I like walking and fishing alone, spending evenings by a fire by the river. All in all, I get a sense there that life is valuable, to be savored. In cities I find myself taking part in other people's games and activities, and I observe other people's rules. In short, Lapland gives me freedom, solitude and quiet.

Question: Can you describe a rewarding day in Lapland, what you would do on such a day?

DHJ: I enjoy being in Lapland during the shift from winter to spring, when the sun returns with intensity, when you can wake up in the morning and know it's not going to get dark for another three months. Sometime in May I pack away my skis and watch the snow melting rapidly from day to day, witness the return of migratory birds, hear the whooper swans calling across the lake. I pay attention to buds emerging on trees and see them burst into leaf, sometimes overnight. The return of light and life after the long, dark winter is a miracle of the most natural and impressive sort.