Woolly

Woolly

Interview with Rebekka Nystabakk, Norway.

We sat down with filmmaker and director Rebekka Nystabakk to talk about her takes and experiences of climate storytelling considering her film and project “Woolly” which is about life on a small sheep farm in arctic Norway -the last one in the village - as it passes on to the next generation, from father to daughter. Although a climate film, it is also personal as the film is about her childhood family home

Climate storytelling should be part of all stories currently. Our film is about food production, animal welfare and how to use local resources, but that can all be incorporated in a wider theme of climate storytelling.

Part of the aim was to find hope and make the story hopeful.

“-Although the film is about my family, I honestly believe they have some kind of stubbornness and idealism that the world needs right now. Their love and care for the nature around them is very moving for me and gives me a lot of hope.”

The film is about how we live with and from nature and there are many problems and perspectives around this. The farm is located in the north of Norway, where steep rugged edges of land and high elevation are defining the landscape. This particular context limits what can be produced here. The landscape functions well with husbandry of sheep due to vast grazing fields at high altitude in the mountains that can’t be cultivated differently. Sheep production here functions very similar to how it was done generations ago. Thus this way of life is comparably more sustainable to other modern life. So one way of dealing with a future outlook of disaster, is in this case to look back and be humble towards the existent generational knowledge.

Considering modern western solutions to go vegan for sustainability, that might not apply in this particular context. The stories must be more nuanced. I agree that we should not produce animal feed in areas where we can produce food for people. In Norway only 3% of the land is agricultural areas, and as much as 45% is good grazing areas in the outfields. That means that if we do not use these resources, a lot of our food production will disappear. Grazing also has a positive effect on biodiversity. Norway is one of the least self-sufficient countries in the world when it comes to food production, and it is a vulnerable position to be in, being dependent on other countries' food production in a time where it will be more and more difficult to produce food in the future.

“-The specific local context of the North seems to be lacking and could bring more nuance to the meat/no meat discussion when considering sustainability and food production.”

This is very specific to for example the areas in the arctic. The growing season is very short, and the list of what is possible to grow there is also short. But these areas have other amazing resources. The question about sustainability is also about using local resources, import, export and transportation at large.

I had many thoughts and questions on these topics, reflecting on my own bias: is this story needed or relevant? I had to engage many researchers and experts to get a better objective understanding of the situation. Through that I am more confident now knowing that this way of farming is an important part of Norwegian agriculture. But I still wanted to question: How do we treat these animals? How do we treat nature? But I have learned that sheep are now an important part of our ecosystem. One third of the red listed species (animals, pollinating insects, plants and fungus) have their habitat in the cultural landscape where the grazing animals live.

Without them, the landscape would change into forest. Grazing resources would disappear, the risk of forest fire would increase, and so on. I have been thinking of how we can be part of ecosystems instead of on top of them?

“-My starting point for this film was very political, I wanted to say something about all the farmers that have been forced to close down. But after working with the film, the relational and emotional aspect became additionally more important.”

I began seeing how this way of life, living so close to nature, is really special and connects with a lot of people. Most of us are so far away from this, and yet it appeals to most of us as meaningful and purposeful.

The connection between the emotional engagement and the political side of it was important to keep balanced, to try to make us want to change. It seems as the film succeeded in appealing to both farmers, making them proud and consumers wanting to be part.

And that’s important because we all feel frightened and frustrated, wanting to do the right thing, so how do we inspire change?

“- It seems as though a lot of people long for a connection to nature, at least in Norway they do.”

In our second-hand online shops, the item most searched for is ‘small farm’, not that they are actually bought, they just search and dream of it. It is a romantic dream of being close to nature, fishing by the fjord, growing your own potatoes, picking berries in the woods. It is this way of living. It is somehow where we came from, it is part of our heritage and history. Although not everything was better before you know, many things were done in a bad way, people used to give birth at home, it didn’t always go well and so on.

In the film the way of life is not only romanticized, it is also authentic. It is in the middle of nowhere, there is no fast food, you will have to take the car to go anywhere. Another perspective is that it is also not possible for everyone to live in this way, so it is really important with locality and specifics and nuances. It is about having the discussion of where we are located, where we come from, what values to bring forward and what we should leave behind.

There is also the bigger context of power dynamics and politics of scale considering the yearly salary of a farmer is only a third of the average salary while distributors are among the richest in the country. So there are problems with power dynamics and government subsidies connecting the struggles in Norway to farmers struggles in the whole of Scandinavia but also Europe in some ways. Regarding the sustainability debate, this divides farmers and people as restrictions of pesticides and other production related structures unequally burdens the farmers to bear the costs while in reality, it is in everybody's interest to stop poisoning our life sustaining environment. It needs to be reformed in a just ethical way.

I believe a lot of farmers would want to produce food in a sustainable way. In Norway farmers are now pushed to have 470 sheeps instead of 70 which is bad for all parts, sheep, humans and nature.

When my sister takes over the farm, she changes the breeding processes for example. She breeds on smaller rams to make the lambs smaller so as to make easier births for the sheep. And this is why it is important with female farmers, they do things differently as for example they relate to giving birth. Also she is working to reverse the number of lambs a sheep births, nowadays a sheep births five or six lambs although she only has two teats. Traditionally, they only ever had two lambs. So it is about needing different and multiple perspectives.

It will be interesting to see how this story is received in different places, and different generations. We are showing it to kids in school to discuss where food comes from and how we can make choices around that.

So climate storytelling is about the future and hope, about trying to find inspiration to change things. Making stories that are both global and local, rural, coastal and in the cities. And bring forward these different perspectives.

Photo by Eirik Evjen.

Additional Impact information

We have had over 30.000 audiences all over Norway, and about 120 cinemas have been screening the film. (In comparison our goal was 7000 audiences and 20 cinemas). So the film has reached a big audience in Norway. There have also been numerous special screenings, both with me present, and with other farmers or researchers present. There has been a big engagement around the film, and several organizations have helped us spread the word. Especially the small farmers union, and the nature and youth union. Woolly had its international premiere in Thessaloniki, Hellas in March, and has also been screened in Ljubljana. In September we are part of RIFF, Reykjavik International Film Festival. We were also part of the Human International Festival in Oslo in March, and will have an outdoor screening during Oslo Pix now in August. So there is still a big interest in the film.

Our short film, Rowdy Flock that we made for The Guardian has had over 104K views on youtube. And our 58 minute TV version will premiere in Sweden and Denmark this autumn.

After talking to Sarah Mosses as part of the Climate Story Lab, we are now working on a case study, to show what impact the film had made in Norway. This we will use in further work with impact internationally. We hope to be part of a big farmers conference in the UK in January, and maybe this can be part of a bigger work there.

Our 5 episode series will premiere on NRK (national broadcaster Norway) in September. And we hope that this will also raise the awareness of food production in Norway to an even bigger audience.