In this presentation I like to explore how private archives can provide alternative source of knowledge for history and anthropology. As an example, I use the life story, photos and archival documents which an elderly woman, whom I call Larisa, from the village of Lovozero shared with me in 2003. Larisa moved to Lovozero, a relatively small village in the Kola Peninsula, Northern Russia, escaping from war-marauded St. Petersburg during the early 1940s, in search for a job and better life. Larisa was a trained veterinary doctor and was employed as a much-needed expert at the reindeer herding cooperative ‘Tundra’. Her life story, memories, and private archive provide a picture of veterinary work and the organization of Soviet reindeer breeding during WW2 and in the post-war years. While veterinary specialists have been given high status and place in the history of Russian development and modernization in the Arctic, meeting Larisa was the first occasion when I realized that some of these experts were actually female. After an early Soviet drive for women emancipation, veterinary science seems to have become a primarily male occupation, especially in the Arctic and in reindeer husbandry. Larisa’s archive and life story are then an important lens for critically analyzing this male dominance, its historical and social formation, and impact on knowledge practices in relation to reindeer herding.