home » Diary » Galya Morrell biography interesting interview facts. Arkady dyers: an amazing woman

Galya Morrell biography interesting interview facts. Arkady dyers: an amazing woman

Dancing ballet on drifting ice floes. She dances barefoot, in a light dress, in the cold, in the Arctic. Sometimes he stumbles and falls into the icy water. But he claims that there is nothing wrong with that.

When Gala Morrell was about fifty, she suddenly realized that most of the time she was sitting in an empty apartment alone. Her husband, a military pilot, spent all his time on assignments, and for many years now they have met extremely rarely, and even then mainly at airfields. Galya did not have a permanent job: for the last fifteen years she has been raising six children. But now all six - two of her own and four of her husband's children from her first marriage - have grown up, gone to universities.

And Galya was surprised to find that she had absolutely nothing to do with herself. So she realized that the time has come to do not what is necessary, but what she likes.

More than anything in the world, Galya liked the North and dancing.

Dancing has been her favorite pastime since childhood. And she fell in love with the North when, in her youth, she worked as a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper and often went on business trips beyond the Arctic Circle.

Now it is difficult to say how Galya came up with the idea to combine these two of her hobbies. It is known, however, that her first "ice dance" happened thanks to a friend who started a social project: a friend wanted to introduce modern art to Eskimo teenagers from the most remote northern villages.

As part of this project, Galya went to Greenland. Of course, there was no stage, no scenery - it was necessary to give a performance right on the snow.

“It was necessary to somehow attract attention,” says Galya Morrell, “Well, I went out to dance in the snow barefoot, in a light dress. It was minus 35 degrees outside. People came from all over the village to watch me dance. They were shocked - even a dog sled passing by scaredly shied away from me. My hands and feet were terribly cold, but I danced!”

On that first trip, she performed many more times: Galya spent several months in Greenland. And since then, for three years now, he has been driving almost non-stop. He climbs into the most remote northern regions and dances barefoot on drifting ice.

She photographs her dances with a small camera, which she sets on a small tripod. Returning from another trip, Galya arranges exhibitions of her photographs. And thus attracts sponsors for the next trips.

Of course, dancing on ice floes is not a safe activity, from time to time Galya stumbles and falls into the icy water. She claims that this is a completely unearthly bliss. You just have to survive the first seven minutes, when the whole body is pierced by hellish pain, and it seems that you are about to die. But then, if you do not die in seven minutes, then you get great pleasure from swimming.

Over the past three years, Galya Morrell has traveled hundreds of kilometers across Siberia with Evenks, nomadic reindeer herders. Traveled around Yakutia on horseback. She has traveled (and danced) to the Bering Sea, Chukotka, Alaska, and the northern Canadian province of Nunavut, where the Canadian Eskimos live.

Galya assures that after fifty she seems to have been born again. “The cold teaches us not to fight with nature, but to accept it,” she says.

However, the main purpose of her trips is not even to dance on ice floes or enjoy swimming in the Arctic Ocean. She finds the most remote Eskimo settlements, which are on the verge of extinction. Communicates with their inhabitants, puts on musical performances with them, dances for them and collects their stories and legends.

On one of these trips, Galya met Oli Jorgen, a professional traveler, an Eskimo by birth.

How did their relationship start? Yes, last year Galya and Olya together covered 4,000 kilometers in a small open motor boat across the Arctic Ocean. So we got to know each other better.

The boat was tiny, no toilet, no heating system. Galya and Olya slept right at the bottom of the boat, on cans of gasoline, with the help of which they cooked their own food on the burner. Washed with ice cold sea water. So they lived for two months.

Their goal was to get to the most remote settlements of the Eskimos, which are practically inaccessible and, thanks to this, still retained the old way of life and traditions unchanged. These settlements, completely cut off from the modern world, can only be reached by small boat and only at certain times of the year.

“In this journey, I found an amazing harmony, for which, probably, I made all these changes in my life,” says Galya. — The harmony of life and death. We got into severe storms, several times found ourselves without food and drink, far from human settlements. When death is so close, at some point you stop being afraid of it. Life and death become like a single space. Having survived this campaign, Olya and I decided that now we will be together.

__________

After 50 comes the most best time in our life. After 50, absolutely everything is possible - a new love, a new career, new experiences and adventures, new friends. You just need to know how. About this - the blog of the creator of the project "Age of Happiness" Vladimir Yakovlev. You can subscribe for free. Don't waste time! 50 is just the beginning!

Polar happiness

The love story of a Russian woman Gali Morrell and an Eskimo Ole-Jorgen Hammeken - finished script for a thriller. She, a graduate of the prestigious Institute of International Relations, a military correspondent for Pravda, a photo artist, could not imagine that she would maneuver in a small boat in the Arctic Ocean in a storm, butcher a seal, drink still warm blood and skillfully wield a round knife - ulu. He - a lawyer, an actor, a Greenland polar explorer - and in nightmare he could not dream that he would leave his familiar world of icebergs and narwhals and find himself among skyscrapers, and then in the forests near Moscow. How fate pushed two extraordinary people together and what they had to go through to be together - in the material of the special correspondent "MK".

Galya Morrell and Ole-Jorgen Hammeken. Photo: Alexey Boytsov

Girl in a red scarf

Galya - from the "golden youth", grew up in a family of high-ranking officials. She graduated from the most prestigious university in the Soviet Union - MGIMO. She worked at the Soviet embassy in, then under the supervision of the master of journalism - Timur Gaidar, in the newspaper Pravda. Knowing several languages, she traveled all over the world.

A predictable career was destroyed by perestroika. Her husband, a famous scientist, left for Russia, and Galya and her two children remained in Russia. True, not for long. In Siberia, on a military transport plane, she met American pilot Steve Morrell and went to live in America. IN big family there were six children: Steve's four children from his first marriage and two Galins.

25 years that she lived on the island of Manhattan, in e, in her life there was peace and quiet. And then suddenly it stormed. Fate made another somersault.

Galya:“It all started with the fact that in 2006 a family friend, the famous polar explorer Dmitry Shparo, sent my youngest 15-year-old son Kevin, who is seriously involved in ballet, on an expedition to the north. Having said: "Ballet school is good, but he should become more manly." And he offered to supplement his artistic education with a polar one. The son became an assistant to the famous polar explorer Ole-Jorgen Hammeken. Three Greenlanders on a boat went through the Bering Strait to Chukotka. At this stage, they needed a Russian-speaking assistant who could help deal with local authorities, with documents, run for groceries. This role was taken by Kevin, who spoke four languages well.

Ole:“Kevin became my assistant during our odyssey in the Russian Arctic. One day I saw a photo in Kevin's notebook. A girl in a red headscarf and a red dress danced barefoot on the ice. I myself grew up in the Arctic desert, icebergs sailed past our shores day and night - blue, white, green and even black. But I have never seen girls dancing on them in my life. "Who is she?" I asked Kevin. "My mom!" Jung replied.

After the end of the expedition, Kevin was bursting with impressions. Calling Galya, who was visiting at that time, he shouted into the phone: “Mom, I want to introduce you to people who have done something incredible for me!”. And brought his new Greenland friends to dacha near Moscow in Kratov.

Galya:“All three of them entered, and I saw only Ole. We looked at each other and could not tear ourselves away for a second.

Ole:“The door was opened to us by the same girl in a red headscarf that danced on ice. I looked into her eyes and felt that my proud Eskimo heart had fallen into an abyss, somewhere to the South Pole - to Antarctica. If I didn't know Kevin, I would have mistaken her for a teenager. But in reality she was only five years younger than me. It turned out that she used to be in the Arctic. For two hours we talked with her about ice, about whales, narwhals, seals and polar bears, about what we both loved and understood, and when the time came to part, I realized that I could not leave. But it was impossible to stay. The girl in the red headscarf was married to a serious American businessman, in his youth a fighter pilot who flew around the Soviet coast during the Cold War in the F-15. She lived in a Manhattan skyscraper and, of course, was not going to change her way of life for the sake of me - an Eskimo born on an icy island, whose ancestors walked in skins and only recently stepped over from the era of the great glaciation into the modern age.

Girl in a red scarf.

Galya:“What was to be done? Both his and my children have not finished school yet. We met by chance, I lived in New York, it is in the north of Greenland. We decided that we would write letters to each other.

Ole:“I left with a broken heart. On white nights I watched icebergs float past my window, but now I missed something in their cosmic beauty. I missed that girl in the red headscarf, who danced so famously on them.

Ole came to New York several times with his pupils from the northernmost orphanage. Each meeting with Galya was a holiday.

Galya:“He was engaged in interesting pedagogy. Being a lawyer by training, he did not work in his specialty, but returned to Greenland and began to deal with difficult children, whom doctors kept on medication. They were abandoned by all the shelters, and in the end they ended up on an island from which you cannot escape. As a rehabilitation, Ole put them on a dog sled and went with them to the ice. To eat, you had to first get the beast, and then cook your own food. In harsh conditions, the guys activated instincts that were not in demand before. They returned from such trips as different people.”

Three years later, their own children graduated from high school and went to universities. Knowing that Galya once created a children's theater on drifting ice in the Canadian Arctic, Ole asked to repeat a similar project involving orphans in northern Greenland.

Three weeks later, Galya and her friend, the famous American composer and pianist Joel Spiegelman, landed on the island of Uummannak, where Ole lived then.

Galya:“After a long stay in Manhattan, when the children grew up, I again wanted to breathe deeply and experience the joys of overcoming and flying. On Uummannak, we created a theater on ice, then a circus on ice, sewed costumes with the guys, and came up with a script based on ancient legends. Eskimo children have excellent control over their bodies. They are born acrobats and jugglers. All the inhabitants of the island came to the performance.

Galya lingered on a rocky island, where no more than a thousand people lived and there were eight thousand sled dogs. The period of her extreme Arctic expeditions began.

Ole taught Galya to walk on thin ice and not to fail, to go without food for a long time, and also not to look at the world through the glasses of stereotypes.

Galya:“In March, while traveling by dog sled, we got into a strong snowstorm that lasted three days. There were four of us including Kevin. It was cold. We slept with two sleds next to each other and covered with a tarpaulin. Then two more dogs came to us. And in the morning, when we woke up, Ole kissed me. I think he did it in his sleep. And when he realized what had happened, he was so embarrassed that he didn’t talk to me for another three days.”

But Galina's smile melted all Olya's doubts. Knowing what both are capable of, they decided to go on a small open boat to the most remote settlements of the polar Eskimos, which are practically inaccessible and thanks to this they have preserved the old way of life and traditions of life unchanged. The expedition was designed for 2-3 months.

Love translated into Eskimo is asenninnok.

“We salted so much that the animals stopped being afraid of us”

Galya:“The six-meter boat was overloaded. We carried fuel and food with us. She had a low draft. During the excitement, we had to go into small bays, which were often not nearby. But I believed Olya, he is a good ice connoisseur and an excellent captain. In an incomprehensible way, he felt where there was underwater ice. I did not see ice floes floating under water at close range, but he had a flair for them. It's the same with the weather. I remember it was a sunny day, blue skies, and Ole said: "On Thursday after four o'clock a terrible snowfall will begin." I peered and saw nothing but the sunny sky. "Can't you see how the air has thickened?" A few days pass, and exactly on Thursday it starts to snow.

He inherited these instincts from his ancestors, which have disappeared from us as unnecessary. Eskimos, for example, see perfectly in the dark. On the polar night, when there are no stars in the sky in bad weather, they go hunting for drifting ice. I was with them on the fishery more than once and was very surprised when in pitch darkness they saw and hunted a walrus.”

Ole and Galya had a minimum supply of food with them, which could be dissolved in hot water. They boiled water with a burner. They had six hundred gallons of gasoline with them.

Galya:“They ate dry fish, maktak - whale skin with a layer of fat, venison. We tried to take with us the products of the winter frost, which, in the absence of the sun, dangled in the ferocious Arctic wind throughout the entire polar night. On the way they hunted seals. The Eskimos do not have vegetables and fruits, but there is no scurvy either. They eat seal meat, which contains vitamin C. In seals, the hunter first of all eats the eyes. No cooking. They are eaten raw. These are the true tastes of nature. Another delicacy is fresh seal liver, which tastes like deer liver, only with the taste of the ocean. We also boiled seaweed in water, it turned out such an arctic soup.

Travelers were so saturated with the smells of the ocean that the animals stopped being afraid of them.

Galya:“Once we literally lay side by side with a colony of seals. But this is a very cautious animal that does not allow a person to approach itself under any circumstances. The seals took us for their own. For two months we ate fish, seal meat and did not have the opportunity to wash ourselves. Because of the constant storms, our clothes were salty. But the main thing is that fear is gone, which can somehow transform into the smells that animals feel.

The Eskimos believe that they live in two worlds at once. In their understanding, there is no wall that separates the animal world from the human world. There is no wall that separates life from death. There is no wall that separates night from day. For them, this partition is permeable. The Eskimos are sure that if you adapt, you can go back and forth. How do shamans do it?

Not far from the Nares Strait, travelers got into a series of local storms.

Galya:“Because of the storm, we could not moor to the shore for 5 days. We collected rainwater, but it was not enough. I closed my eyes, and I dreamed of small bubbles of Borjomi. It was like a mirage. The boat was tossed, we were overwhelmed by the waves. Ole always had a gun in his hand, because polar bears are known to be excellent swimmers. I had a pepper spray in my hand. We went from sleep to wakefulness. It felt like I was losing gravity. Before, something was always pressing on me. Thousands of invisible ropes tied me to the house, to relatives, to stones, to trees. Once, when we were carried in a fragile boat with holes across the ocean, I suddenly felt that these ropes had let me go, and nothing was holding me anymore. And all this happened with the loss of fear.”

Ole:“We continued to be carried by the sea. We ate only what the sea sent us. Sometimes we were unlucky and had to starve. We slept at the bottom of our "trough". Rain drummed on the tarpaulin with which we were hiding, which, by definition, should not be in the Arctic desert. On one of those nights, I told Galya that I loved her. Everything was like a dream. I thought she said yes. But I wasn’t sure if this was true, because the elements were raging all around, we had a hole, and polar bears roamed along the shore.”

Galya:“For five stormy days, we have grown together into one organism so much that we told each other that if we return back, we will be together all our lives.”

When the sun finally appeared in a break in the clouds and the sea calmed down to calm, the travelers saw a small bay ... with crimson water. The rain washed away red sediments into the sea.

Galya and Ole were able to get out of the bay and walk a few hours to the nearest settlement. There they mended themselves and fell asleep for the first time on a dry surface.

Ice performance.

"Butchering a seal is a woman's occupation"

Galya:“Apart from the storm, those were probably the happiest moments of my life. As soon as we realized that we were saved, the first thing Ole asked me was: “Are you ready to become an Eskimo wife?” After all, this is a whole science that needs to be learned from the age of three. Previously, the wife got up an hour before her husband got up to soften his boots with her teeth - light as socks, kamiks, which are most often sewn from the skin of seals. During the night they froze, became stiff. The wife, chewing the skin so that it becomes soft, took care that the first step on a new day for her husband was comfortable.

Now many Greenlanders have special mechanical cars. Kamiki is put on a prefabricated wooden block. When you turn the handle, its two halves move apart in different directions and the seal skin stretches. Ole at least has such a machine.

The husband of the Eskimos is a hunter, and the whole life lies with his wife. The first gift that Ole gave me was a round ulu knife with a bone handle, which is inherited in their family. With the help of this knife, an Eskimo wife builds a house out of hard snow. She carries the window for the ice house with her in a sled. Previously, the stomach of a seal was used as glass, but now it is a piece of plastic. With the same round knife, she butchers the seal. This is a women's job. I was taught this skill, and I will say that it is oh so difficult to do it. If you cut the seal in the wrong place, bile will spread, and the whole carcass can be thrown away. It should be noted that among the Eskimos all parts of the animal are used. They separate pieces of meat, offal, and also unravel the twenty-meter intestines of the seal, wash it in a groove, and then feed it to dogs.

But before you start butchering an animal, you need to perform a ritual. You need to take a little water, warm it in your mouth and pour it into the mouth of the seal, which lies with its head turned towards the sun. Eskimos thus thank the animal for giving them its body.

Also, an Eskimo wife must sew clothes, cook food, think about supplies and please her husband so that he has good mood. Eskimo men have no hair on their bodies, but fluff grows on their cheeks. The wife, with the help of small tweezers, pulls out these hairs for her husband. The procedure can take an hour or more.

By the way, many people think that the skin of the Eskimos is bronze in color. In fact, after the polar night, they are whiter than you and I. But when the sun comes out, literally in a week their skin acquires dark shade and they become like Indians."

But before living together, Galya and Olya had to go through many trials. Both were not free at the time of their return from the expedition. Galya was married, Ole - married to a Dane.

Galya:“My business husband flew all over the world, and for 25 years I was practically a straw widow. We had a good relationship but he loved what he did. I was very lonely.

Ole had a civil marriage. He lived with a wealthy woman. As soon as she found out about our romance, she declared a hunt for me. She told her acquaintances that she would not calm down until she skinned me like a seal. I was forced to leave. Olya's wife assigned three bodyguards. He lost the ability to make phone calls, send e-mail letters. From such humiliation, Olya literally boiled blood.

Ole:“When, after the end of the expedition, Galya flew to New York to the children, I almost went crazy without her. I couldn't breathe deeply, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't see anyone. This went on for three months. In January, I took a plane ticket and flew to New York. She was waiting for me at the airport. It was midnight. We rushed to each other, stood and cried like children for two hours, unable to move.

And the incredible adventures of the Eskimo in America began.

Galya:“After the expanses of Greenland, it was not easy for Olya to navigate among the skyscrapers. I remember we woke up, went out into the street, he says, pointing to the skyscraper: "This mountain has not stood here before." There were plenty of incidents, including those related to the toilet. There are no toilets in Greenland where you need to flush the water. There, a communal bucket is used for these purposes. In the morning, a special person, without knocking, delicately takes it away and puts a new one in its place. By the way, this job is highly paid and respected. It is believed that there is no dirty work on the “white earth”.

Olya had to get used to the benefits of civilization.

Galya:“He constantly, every day, collected all the organic remains. He just couldn't throw away food waste. Then we went to the banks of the Hudson to feed the seagulls with them. In general, Olya did not like the "chemical" food from the supermarket. In Koreatown, we used to buy fish for him and hang them up on the balcony ceiling to dry. Ole walked with ropes all the time. On them he hung pieces of meat to dry for food and bones - for various rituals. The guests, entering the house, could not understand where such bad smell».

But soon the lovers had to leave the place. Ole's civil wife did not leave them alone.

Ole:“And our wanderings around the world began. From New York we flew to Chukotka. Here we warmed up and slowly came to our senses. From Chukotka we moved to Yakutia and traveled for a long time along the Kolyma tract. Russia is an amazing country, it is impossible to understand it until you walk through it on foot or sail in a small open boat. I was lucky to do it. And I can say: the doors of every house were open for me. People shared with me their best food, shelter, dreams. Someone takes me for a Chinese, someone - for an Indian, and no one believed that I was an Eskimo. For most of them, I was the first Eskimo in their lives.”

Ole and Galya still travel a lot, arranging exhibitions of unique photographs. They live either in Greenland, or in the Russian Arctic, or in Moscow. At the same time, Galya says: “Ole is extraordinary: courageous, kind, patient. He is not annoyed by the things in me that would annoy anyone. white man". She teaches Kalaallisut, the main language of the people of Greenland. Finally, they want to settle in the village of Savissivik in the north of Greenland, where their love blossomed.

Ole:“This spring, I took Galya on a dog sled to the ice edge in northern Greenland, where walruses and seals bask in the sun. There I asked her to be my wife. I had only one condition: we must get married at the top of Hammeken Point - the world's northernmost mountain, which bears my name. Getting there is very difficult. It is possible on a small plane, but it is very expensive. But we believe that luck will not leave us in this either. After all, we are both lucky.”

As a child, Galya's brother had a set of wooden dolls of different nationalities. He lost everyone, and Galya got one Eskimo. She valued this toy very much, but then there was a fire, and the wooden doll burned down along with the house.

Galya:“It was necessary to bitterly mourn the loss at the age of four in order to find a real Eskimo closer to fifty! And your destiny."

IN Lately the struggle for the resources of the Arctic region has intensified, in particular, it is here that the world's largest oil and gas reserves are stored. At the same time, the life of people who originally inhabit these lands often remains aside. Galya Morrell, head of the Avannaa project, spoke about the changes that are taking place with the indigenous peoples of the Arctic in an interview with Business Russia.

– What are the specifics of your research, what do you do in the Arctic?

“Our expedition is called Avannaa, which means “north” in Greenlandic. We travel to the northernmost settlements of the world, where endangered peoples live, such as the Inughuit, or the polar Eskimos, of which there are less than 800 people. In recent years, I have lived in Greenland and I can say that the situation there is very similar to the situation in the Russian Far North. Usually we conduct expeditions in the north of Greenland, the last time we covered 4 thousand kilometers by boat: we can’t take any food with us, because the whole space is occupied by gasoline. And so we come to a village where no one has ever been, and it turns out that an amazing designer lives there, or, for example, a museum of beaded dresses. Then we talk about all this and show it at exhibitions. My first exhibition opened in Moscow, and then in European capitals and New York. After our work on the north of Greenland became known, Artur Nikolaevich Chilingarov suggested that we organize similar expeditions in Russia.

– What are your first impressions of Yakutia?

- Yakutia is known to the world for its natural resources. But few people know what is in the pantry of Russia for last years many innovative technologies. A new face of Yakutia is being created - this is not an easy job, in which people of various specialties, from scientists to artists, participate.

A lot of work is being done in the republic to restore the unique breed of the Yakut horse and the Yakut cow, which are not afraid of 60-degree frosts. German Arbugaev, a local entrepreneur and partner of the Avannaa expedition, who created the unique Chochur Muran ethno-complex, together with the cynologist Lena Sidorova, recreated the extinct Yakut Laika breed. For children participating in our expedition, these animals are inseparable from their daily lives. That is why they are the main characters of their paintings and sculptures. Through our pages on in social networks we show the world their work, and for the first time in their lives people learn that Yakutia is not only diamonds and gold. Indeed, the main diamonds of Yakutia are its people. Children, old people and everyone else.

“The main diamonds of Yakutia are its people. Children, old people and all the rest."

What is the purpose of your expeditions? Is this some sort of anthropological study?

– On the one hand, we are trying to create an archive of what will disappear in a few years, and on the other hand, to help local artists find their audience. During our trips, we also actively work with children, for example, we created a theater on drifting ice in Greenland, and now we want to do the same in Chukotka.

- Does the life of people in our Arctic differ from the same Greenland, according to your feelings?

- To get to the right places in Yakutia, we drove along the Kolyma highway: first in an UAZ, then in a tractor bucket and in a small inflatable boat. All this took place during the flood, which, in fact, is the result of climate change. Villages that used to be connected by country roads have now turned into islands. We sailed to one of these islands and suddenly found some amazing life. For example, the tradition of the Yakut national costumes was lost in Soviet times, and now it is coming back. Locals also create unique works of art from pieces of fur, birch bark, etc. Anna Akimova, 82, founded the first private museum in history Yakut clothes, every person there is an artist - neither in Alaska nor in Canada, we have not seen this. When we returned from the expedition, a well-known portal wrote about us, and this article caught the eye of Paul Rodzianko, chairman of the board and executive director of the Hermitage Museum Foundation, an organization that deals with exhibitions of the Hermitage abroad, and he suggested that we hold such an exhibition in New York . We decided to hold an exhibition at the center of the designer Donna Karan - she made it specifically for artists who, without external support, will not be able to show their art to other people. The New York show was originally supposed to take place in November, but now we think that it will most likely take place in December. We decided to include exhibits from the north of Greenland to show that the Arctic is one. The people who have always lived there are united not only by one similar land, but also by similar languages, art, etc.

“We are trying to create an archive of what will disappear in a few years, and on the other hand, help local artists find their audience.”

– Art in the Arctic – what is it like? What are its origins?

– This winter we covered more than 2.5 thousand kilometers through the taiga and tundra on reindeer teams, horses and on foot through the most inaccessible places in northern Yakutia. -50°C outside, no running water, no toilet, but at the same time every person here, regardless of profession, is an artist. Otherwise, it is simply impossible to survive here.

Clothing, furniture, jewelry, musical instruments, amulets - everything is made from the remains of what was eaten or used, nothing is thrown away here, neither bones, nor hair, nor skins, not even scales.

"The tradition of the Yakut national costumes was lost in the Soviet era, and now it is coming back."

Fabulous items made of birch bark, metal, wood, beads, horse hair, fish skin could decorate any museum or private collection, but due to the absolute isolation of these villages, the works of folk craftsmen remain unseen by anyone, and therefore unclaimed.

Our task was to collect the most interesting things, make portraits of artists, record their stories in order to present them later - in absentia - to potential buyers.

The salaries of the people living here are meager, and the cost of living, as everywhere in the Far North, is much higher than in the capital. Additional earnings would help people not only live more comfortably, but also support humanitarian projects, such as preserving traditions and passing them on to the younger generation, without which the future of original regions is simply impossible.

In partnership with the Hermitage Museum Foundation, we select the best works for possible acquisition for the collection of the Hermitage Museum as part of the Art Without Borders initiative. We are currently preparing an exhibition at the Urban Zen Center (a cultural center for designer Donna Karan that supports artists and craftsmen living in remote areas of the world).

– Who helps you organize expeditions?

– Until recently, since we were based in Greenland, we had only Avannaa, it was supported partly by the government of Greenland, and also partly by companies that are engaged in the development of the Arctic. These are mainly Canadian, American and Scottish players interested in oil and gas production. However, we have our own task: first of all, we monitor how the climate is changing. If even 10 years ago the ice in the Arctic stayed for 9 months, 3 years ago it did not come at all, the year before last it was 2 months, and last year it was almost gone again.

– Who do you involve in your unusual research: ecologists, anthropologists, actors?

– We have two permanent members: me and my Greenlandic partner Ole Jørgen Hammeken, who is also a famous actor, his last film was nominated for an Oscar from Greenland. We have a lot of partners who join our expeditions from time to time. We also constantly take children with us on expeditions so that they can learn something about their small homeland. In the summer we traveled in Yakutia, and various people rode with us to the next village, who told us the stories of their ancestors, including children.

- Children's theme, apparently, occupies a special place in your work?

– Our work with children is based on the concept of micro-expeditions. Most of the children living on the edge of the earth have never left their own village in their lives. The maximum went to the neighboring village, and then if it is not very far away. This year we took a group of children from central Yakutia and went with them to the Pole of Cold in Oymyakon. It was very important for us that they look at their own region with different eyes. On the way, they drew, sculpted, composed music, danced, sang under the guidance of famous artists and artists from Yakutsk, who are participating in our project. They returned home as completely different people - with a passionate desire to do something beautiful and useful.

We are very grateful to QIWI, our main partner in Russia, and its founder, Boris Kim, for their help in organizing our mobile activities. The endemic kiwi bird, the symbol of the company, has become a regular participant in our exhibitions. Children adore this travel bird, now finally in the Arctic, and are constantly creating it in the most different types using a variety of natural materials- from dog hair and poultry feathers to stone and ice.

– Why did you become interested in the Arctic in principle? This is a very unusual travel destination.

– I come from a northern family of nomadic Komi and Pomors, in my early years I spent a lot of time in the North, including in the tundra, I learned how people can survive in hunger and cold, creating life out of nothing. After I grew up, I worked for 13 years in the Pravda newspaper, where I wrote about polar life, spent a lot of time at drifting polar stations. Then I lived for many years in America after the collapse of the USSR, and then moved to Greenland - it seemed to me very interesting place. When we talk about the Arctic, we must keep two things in mind. First, you need to think about people. Eat a big difference between the Arctic and Antarctica: no one lives in Antarctica, but people live in the Arctic for thousands of years, and this must be taken into account. At the moment, life goes on in the Arctic, it does not end, no matter how difficult it may be. People who make decisions must understand that everything possible must be done so that, despite the search for minerals, these peoples survive. Secondly, it is necessary to take into account climate change: it is difficult to say what will happen here in 5-10 years. If all the changes continue, the Arctic will change beyond recognition, and in this it is necessary to find a field for cooperation between countries.

- Recently, some observers have expressed a radical point of view that there is no need to mine any minerals in the Arctic, that it should remain exclusively a cultural space. What do you think of it?

- This point of view of dreamers, because this simply cannot happen, oil and gas will be produced and they will be searched for. I'm only talking about the fact that big companies that come to the Arctic must have a sense of great responsibility so that the lives of people living nearby do not change for the worse.

“At the moment, life goes on in the Arctic, it does not end, no matter how difficult it may be.”

– What other expeditions do you have planned for the near future?

- Now we are going on a reconnaissance expedition to Chukotka, where people also live in a similar situation and suffer from the same changes. After that, we will go by boat to remote villages: this will be preparation for a large expedition, which should show the unity of the Eskimos living on both sides of the Bering Strait. From time immemorial, local residents went to visit each other, until 1948, when an ice “curtain” suddenly appeared, which divided many Eskimo families, people did not see each other for more than 50 years. And only thanks to Dmitry Shparo's Bering Bridge expedition, agreements were signed that allowed the Eskimos to visit each other without visas. In fact, it was another wall that, like the Berlin one, divided the world in two. Just about her, few people knew and thought.

Galya Morrell/
Galya Morrell, Cold Artist
(An artist named Cold),
multimedia artist working in the genre of spectacular synthetic performance on drifting sea ice.

Galya Morrell has spent more than 25 years in the Arctic as an organizer and participant in polar expeditions, a reporter, essayist, lecturer, photo artist and theater director. Her photographs have been shown at many exhibition venues around the world and are kept in public and private collections.

In 2009, together with American composer and conductor Joel Spiegelman, she founded Uummannaq Music and Ice Circus, a drift ice stage in northern Greenland. The main goal of this project was an attempt to maintain the traditional culture of the Eskimos and reduce the number of suicides among teenagers in the northern settlements caused by abrupt climatic and social changes.

As part of this project, Morrell created a series of carnival fantasies on the ice of Baffin Bay, inspired by ancient Eskimo legends. The main performers of performances on the ice were Eskimo teenagers.

In 2010, she organized the first ever Kyrgyz Culture Week in Greenland, and in 2012, Greenland Week in New York and Kyrgyzstan, in 2013-2014. - Days of Greenland in Chukotka and Yakutia.

In 2012, together with the Greenlandic polar explorer, actor and educator Ole Jørgen Hammeken, she founded the permanent cultural expedition Avannaa, the main goal of which is to preserve culture and traditions small peoples and helping artists living in some of the most isolated and hard-to-reach places in the world.

Morrell has taken part in many polar expeditions. In 2012, she traveled 4,000 km in a small open boat as part of the Greenlandic ethnographic expedition Avannaa through the northernmost and geographically inaccessible settlements of Greenland.

Tells the amazing life story of Gali Morrell.

At 53, this cheerful woman dances ballet on drifting ice floes! She dances barefoot, in a light dress, in the cold, in the Arctic. Sometimes he stumbles and falls into the icy water. But he claims that there is nothing wrong with that.

And Galya was surprised to find that she had absolutely nothing to do with herself. So she realized that the time has come to do not what is necessary, but what she likes.

More than anything in the world, Galya liked the North and dancing.

As part of this project, Galya went to Greenland. Of course, there was no stage, no scenery - it was necessary to give a performance right on the snow.

“It was necessary to somehow attract attention,” says Galya Morrell, “Well, I went out to dance in the snow barefoot, in a light dress. It was minus 35 degrees outside. People came from all over the village to watch me dance. They were shocked - even a dog team passing by scaredly shied away from me. My hands and feet were terribly cold, but I danced!”

Of course, dancing on ice floes is an unsafe occupation, from time to time Galya stumbles and falls into the icy water. She claims that this is a completely unearthly bliss. You just have to survive the first seven minutes, when the whole body is pierced by hellish pain, and it seems that you are about to die. But then, if you do not die in seven minutes, then you get great pleasure from swimming.

Over the past three years, Galya Morrell has walked hundreds of kilometers across Siberia with Evenks - nomadic reindeer herders. Traveled around Yakutia on horseback. She has traveled (and danced) to the Bering Sea, Chukotka, Alaska, and the northern Canadian province of Nunavut, where the Canadian Eskimos live.

Galya assures that after fifty she seems to have been born again. “The cold teaches us not to fight with nature, but to accept it,” she says.

On one of these trips, Galya met Ole Jorgen, a professional traveler and Arctic mountaineer, an Eskimo by birth.

How did their relationship start? Yes, last year Galya and Olya together covered 4,000 kilometers in a small open motor boat across the Arctic Ocean. So we got to know each other better.

The boat was tiny, no toilet, no heating system. Galya and Olya slept right on the bottom of the boat, spreading a mattress on gas cylinders, with the help of which they cooked their own food on a burner. Washed with ice cold sea water. So they lived for two months.

“In this journey, I found an amazing harmony, for the sake of which, probably, I made all these changes in my life,” says Galya. - The harmony of life and death. We got into severe storms, several times found ourselves without food and drink, far from human settlements. When death is so close, at some point you stop being afraid of it. Life and death become like a single space. Having survived this campaign, Olya and I decided that now we will be together.

What can you do now that you couldn't at 35?

Dancing on Ice! First, I'm in much better physical shape now than I was at 35. Only with age I realized that our body is a sacred vessel that must be respected and protected, otherwise it will break.

Secondly, because now I am not at all afraid that someone will think or say bad things about me. Now it doesn't bother me at all.

Would you like to be young again?

“In my youth, I often worried that I was missing out on unique opportunities, and I was very upset about this. Only with age did I realize that the train of fortune stops at your station all the time. If you missed it, don't worry, don't despair and, most importantly, don't leave the station. The next one will definitely come. You just have to be ready to jump into it the next time it stops at your station.”

Galya Morell

I learned about this amazing woman this winter. About her photo exhibition in Moscow, dedicated to icebergs, much was said and written. I was impressed by the colorful photos, and I thought that I should put them on the blog and show these amazingly beautiful shots.

PHOTO OF ICEBERGS BY GALINA MORELL.

WHO IS GALYA MORELL?

Galina Morell is a traveler, author of numerous social projects, organizer and participant of polar expeditions, photographer, artist, author of performances, journalist. She dances on ice, works in the jungles of India, swims for months on an open boat in the ocean among icebergs and polar bears, helps orphans. But this is not what impressed me so much (although this too). Galina is an amazing person, beautiful, energetic, subtle, sincere, courageous and at the same time gentle and soft. It pushes the boundaries of the usual consciousness, energizes and gives positive, hope and joy, even from the realization that there are such people in our world.

Galina was born into a wealthy Moscow family in 1961. Life on Rublyovka, MGIMO. Clever beauty. From the age of 17 she worked as a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper,

She worked there for 13 years, wrote about polar life, as she spent a lot of time at drifting polar stations. And she was happy - her beloved husband (a famous scientist, petrochemist), two children.

And then there was a restructuring, which she went through very hard. The first husband, who could not find himself in Russia in the 90s, left for France. Galina decided to stay at home, because she believed that there were so many impressions and such interesting life she won't have it anywhere else. She left two children with her. By the way, she still has a good relationship with her husband, they call each other every two days. Can there be any other relationship with this woman? She is so sincere, open and interested in people. She makes everyone fall in love with her.

However, you can't escape fate. Having met another man of her life, an American fighter pilot, Galina nevertheless left Russia for America.

She met her second husband in Siberia, they fell in love at first sight. He had four children from his first marriage (the ex-wife left for another, who was left with 5 small children). Galina became the mother of 6 children. Although she laughs and says that in fact she already had many more children then. After all, since ex-wife she is also friends with her second husband and her new children) Oh, you will get confused)) But this is not the main thing, because she believes that the family never collapses, it can only expand. Everyone continues to be close friends and dear people.

Galina lived in New York for 25 years, but constantly traveled the world with her husband (in connection with his work). She immersed herself in the role of a mother, enjoyed "attending" school with her children, doing homework together, discovering a new world for herself and raising children, let's say ... not quite typical)

LOVE COBRA AND YOU WILL NOT BE SCARY.

“I have always considered my main goal of upbringing to be teaching children to look at the world without fear.”

Here are just two examples that made a huge impression on me. When she went to work with her husband in India, Galina left the children in a boarding school located in the jungle. The boarding school was organized by her friend for children whose parents would never get out of prison - these were the children of the most notorious criminals.

“My children, who by that time were all playing various musical instruments, thought that they would come to a place where children were sad and bad, who had an unhappy childhood, and would arrange various events for them, teach them to play the piano, flute, cello, etc. But it turned out the opposite. These wise orphans with an insanely terrible fate taught my children a lot”

When Galina brought the children to the boarding school, a huge cobra lay in the yard. The children were frightened and began to ask to return. So the children from the orphanage taught her the first lesson, taking them to the cobra. They said that the cobra will not do anything if it is not touched and not afraid. She lives here and does not want to harm anyone. She just needs to be loved. Another lesson is the attitude to food. The choice of not only dishes, but also products was very poor. They picked every crumb off the table. Of course, they have learned to appreciate food. And there were many such lessons.

Galina says that she knows that these were difficult conditions, but she is sure that this was one of the main and necessary periods of personal development in the life of her children. And she did so consciously so that her children could discover new horizons for themselves. And the children are grateful to her for that.

And here is another (and, by no means, the last) period of the formation of her youngest son. He went to a very prestigious cowboy college in Death Valley. He wanted to, stubbornly prepared and acted. For 2 years he was cut off from the world. The students lived like hermits. They did everything with their own hands - they grew wheat, bred livestock, cooked and served themselves. It was impossible for family and friends to come here (mothers could faint when they saw the living conditions).

Death Valley is a harsh and ruthless land. For 5 months of the year, heat dominates this territory, and over the next 7 months, hot weather only slightly weakens its strength. Temperatures in summer are usually above 50 °C. But getting into college is incredibly difficult. But the students organized their own studies. They chose their teachers, and any professor, at their request, flew to them and gave lessons - it could be dance classes or lectures on nuclear physics (for every taste). The college pays for everything.

NEW U-turn in GALI MORELL'S LIFE

As a child, brother Gali had a collection of wooden dolls of different nationalities. In the end, they all got lost, and the girl was left with one doll - an Eskimo. She took great care of this doll. But there was a fire, the whole house burned down and the doll along with it. She bitterly mourned this loss and did not suspect that fate, after many years, would prepare for her a meeting with a real Eskimo, who would become her beloved man.

Eskimo Ole Jorgen Hammeken - lawyer, Greenlandic explorer and traveler. He was brought to a dacha near Moscow by Galina's son Kevin, who became Ole's assistant on an expedition to the Russian Arctic. The son was full of impressions after the expedition and wanted to introduce his mother to an incredible person. They met and realized that they were made for each other. This is how he remembers the first meeting with Galina Ole.

I looked into her eyes and felt that my proud Eskimo heart fell into an abyss, somewhere to the South Pole - to Antarctica. If I didn't know Kevin, I would have mistaken her for a teenager. But in reality she was only five years younger than me. It turned out that she used to be in the Arctic. For two hours we talked with her about ice, about whales, narwhals, seals and polar bears, about what we both loved and understood, and when the time came to part, I realized that I could not leave. But it was impossible to stay. She was married to a serious American entrepreneur, a millionaire, and a young fighter pilot. She lived in a Manhattan skyscraper and certainly had no intention of changing her lifestyle for me, an Eskimo born on an ice island, whose ancestors walked in skins and had only recently crossed over from the great glaciation into the modern age.

But Galya Morell at the age of 50 changed her lifestyle. Now Galina lives between Moscow, Oslo, Greenland and New York.

She is ready to become a real Eskimo wife. And this is a whole science, which is learned from a very early age.

THE SCIENCE OF BEING THE ESKIMO'S WIFE.

The husband of the Eskimos is a hunter, and the whole life lies with his wife. The first gift that Ole gave me was a round ulu knife with a bone handle, which is inherited in their family. With the help of this knife, an Eskimo wife builds a house out of hard snow. She carries the window for the ice house with her in a sled. Previously, the stomach of a seal was used as glass, but now it is a piece of plastic. With the same round knife, she butchers the seal. This is a women's job. I was taught this skill, and I will say that it is oh so difficult to do it. If you cut the seal in the wrong place, bile will spread, and the whole carcass can be thrown away. But before you start butchering an animal, you need to perform a ritual. You need to take a little water, warm it in your mouth and pour it into the mouth of the seal, which lies with its head turned towards the sun. Eskimos thus thank the animal for giving them its body.
Also, an Eskimo wife must sew clothes, cook food, think about supplies and please her husband so that he has a good mood.

Previously, the wife got up an hour before her husband got up to soften his boots with her teeth - light as socks, kamiks, which are most often sewn from the skin of seals. During the night they froze, became stiff. The wife, chewing the skin for 30-40 minutes, so that it becomes soft, took care that the first step on a new day for her husband was comfortable

Galina began a period of extreme Arctic expeditions. Here are some excerpts from her impressions.

We walk around in animal skins and hunt with a harpoon. We drink living blood and sometimes do not wash for months. For us, a third of the year is night, a third is day, and the rest of the time is twilight. My friends sincerely pity me. My move from Manhattan to northern Greenland is seen by them as a reckless step back - to the Stone Age, to the Anthropogenic time, to the great glaciation. But this, of course, from which side to look - if from space, then you don’t need to be Einstein to see that I was very lucky. After all, now I live where the real elite of the world lives. Because no one lives above us

Together with Ole, in a small open boat, they traveled 4,000 km across the Arctic Ocean. For two months they lived side by side, washing themselves in icy outboard water, being careful of polar bears, skirting icebergs, falling asleep at the bottom of the boat, falling into a strong storm. “Having survived this campaign, we became united and realized that we would be together”

PROJECTS OF GALINA MORELL.

One of Galina's first projects was ice dancing. She dances in a dress, barefoot in minus 35 degrees.

Sometimes he stumbles and falls into the icy water… “If you survive the first 7 minutes, when a monstrous pain occurs, then it’s not cold anymore, but, on the contrary, you feel unearthly bliss”

Galina visited Chukotka, Alaska, Yakutia. She finds the most remote endangered settlements of the Eskimos, collects their stories and legends, arranges musical performances, circus performances, using drifting ice as a stage and attracting local residents to these performances.

Galina Morell founded the Avannaa Cultural Expedition with Ole. The purpose of the expedition is to help creative people living in isolated settlements, as well as to combat the epidemic of suicides among teenagers in the northern settlements.

They have become true parents to hundreds of children, they have become friends to people who have lost faith in life.

“People from newspapers who have seen my Arctic pictures often contact me and ask me to do a social report about alcoholism and drug addiction. But they don't understand that I don't do it. I work with a lot of people who are former alcoholics, and I know for sure that if a person is shown as an alcoholic, terrible, nightmarish, then it will only get worse for him. I did, for example, a colossal project - very large portraits of former alcoholics and just alcoholics measuring two meters by a meter, in which they looked like the most beautiful people in the world. They looked at these portraits and said: "God, for the first time in my life someone saw me like this, it's really me."

AFTER 50 YEARS, IF YOU DON'T LOVE YOU WILL GET OLD VERY SOON.

Galina Miller loves the North and is grateful to him for bringing a person back to his real self. She learned to appreciate every moment and to be very, very patient.

“In general, in Greenland you learn everything. Walk on thin ice and don't fall through. Live long without food. Don't get cold. Don't be mean. Don't complain. Do not look at the world through the glasses of stereotypes

"I enter every new stage life without tragedy and try to live it as well as I can. I don't know what will happen to me tomorrow. I never plan because we have a better glider (looks up) than ourselves. I just try to do my job honestly, well and put my whole self into it.”

Definitely need to love! Himself, people, the world around. After 50, if you do not love, you will become old very soon. And in no case should you be offended by life and complain.

And, finally, an interview with Julia Menshova Galya Morell. Check it out for sure!

The article used materials from the article“Performance of a lifetime” and from the blog (which I recommend)"Age of Happiness" . At the end of the article dedicated to Galya, you can read her answers to all comments. By the way, here