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The Sami, an indigenous people of the Artic Circle, have herded reindeer for hundreds of years
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The first hint of the approaching reindeer is the buzz-saw roar of motorcycles. Suddenly, a 500-m-wide corral is filled with the rhythmic lowing of a vast reindeer herd running at full gallop. The Lapland equivalent of cowboys come thundering in, bringing up the rear on motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles.
It is the reindeer roundup of the Sami, the indigenous people of the Arctic Circle, who for hundreds of years have herded their reindeer down from the mountains of Norway where they have their summer pasture. Now it's time to divide the herd into smaller groups so that families can keep track of their stock during the arduous winter that is about to begin. "You should never ask a Sami how many reindeer he has," cautions Börje Allas, one of four brothers who still follow the ancient traditions of reindeer herding. "It's like asking an Englishman how much money he earns."
The reindeer are remarkably tame despite their huge numbers. Sami children walk among the huge pulsating herd, which divides politely to avoid stepping on humans. One point of the roundup is to identify new calves that were born during the summer season. Male reindeer, who are judged to be too tough to eat, are castrated and have their statuesque antlers removed to lessen the chance of fighting. All of this is going on while the surging herd of perhaps 2,000 reindeer are running around in circles, their eyes wide with panic.
The lowing of the herd is deafening. Nils Johan Päivö, an amateur anthropologist, is making a digital recording of the animals for a Sami-inspired website (www.nsi.no). "The sounds of the animals are like a symphony," he says with wonder as he holds his microphone out to the surging herd. To one side, Sami women tend fires, administer the inoculations to the newborns and keep the animal census. At virtually every fire there is a reindeer that has been killed and its meat hung in trees to await inclusion in the dinner pot. "It may seem cruel to an outsider, but to us it is the normal cycle of nature that we have to live off the animals that we raise," says Anna Stina Allas.
One would never guess it from the teeming herd, but these are extremely hard times for the Sami. Nationwide the reindeer herd has fallen by over a third, from around 180,000 animals in 1993 to only 115,000 today. The main cause of the shortfall is freak weather for 10 years. A hot summer is followed quickly by a wet autumn and a very cold winter. That puts a layer of ice on the lichen the reindeer feed on, and they end up underweight. "It's a depression for us," says Börje Allas. "Only 10% to 30% of the cows have calves while the number should be 80% to 90%." The Swedish government has sought to take the edge off the crisis by paying the Sami a subsidy of $1.50 per kg for reindeer meat. Another problem the Sami face is that fewer and fewer young people want to maintain their traditional ways and live off reindeer. It is a 40-km trek to the nearest school, and when they graduate more and more young people simply opt to remain in the towns where the way of life is less austere.
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