The Kemi River is the major watercourse in the Finnish province of Lapland and the 'stream of life' for the inhabitants of its banks. Franz Krause examines fishing, transport and hydropower on the Kemi River and analyses the profoundly rhythmic patterns in the river dwellers' activities and the river's dynamics. The course of the seasons and weekly and daily rhythms of discharge, temperature, work and other patterns make the river dwellers' world an ever-transforming phenomenon. The flows of life and the frictions of everyday encounters continually remake the river and its inhabitants, negotiating national strategies, economic power, people's ingenuity, and the currents of the Kemi River.

Franz Krause, born in 1979, works at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Cologne, Germany. His previous postdoctoral projects were at the Countryside and Community Research Institute and Tallinn University. His research focuses on the role of water in culture and society. He works with approaches from environmental anthropology, political ecology and environmental history.