A tale of Santa’s reindeer
NEON or LED lights glow at this time of the year, on buildings and in shopping centres worldwide, depicting St Nicholas (aka Santa Claus, St Nick, Father Christmas) flying through the air as the bringer of children’s presents. Yet we tend to forget his couriers – the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) pulling his sleigh.
My first experience of such mammals was in a Christmas gift of a book, in post-war days entitled ‘T’was the Night Before Christmas’, written by an American author now nearly two centuries ago for his children. I can still remember a few lines:
“When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
“But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer ….
“More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
“And he (Santa) whistled, and shouted, and called them by name …”
Seventeen years later in my first year at Oxford University, reading Geography, for the first two terms I had to study Ethnology and was tutored by two outstanding ethnologists, Drs Ken Burridge and Audrey Butt. I well remember a tutorial paper I had to deliver to fellow students. It was entitled ‘Lapp folk and their reindeer’. What we know about reindeer Early man recorded his hunting exploits of wild reindeer in cave paintings in the northern hemisphere in the form of spear and antler drawings. Wild reindeer still exist but are classified today as a vulnerable species in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) mammal listings.
These animals often roamed in the wild in northern climes but with the gradual southern movement of continental icesheets, in the latter stages of the Ice Ages, reindeer, in their search for a permafrost environment, became nourishment for mankind in Mesolithic times. Enough said.
Today there are, essentially, three basic types of reindeer. The wild reindeer of the tundra lands and those of the boreal forest together with semi-domesticated herds. The latter are herded in northern Scandinavia living in northern Norway, Sweden and Finland stretching across Russia, Mongolia, to Alaska, Canada, and even Greenland.
It is not surprising that some 14 subspecies of reindeer have been identified plus two extinct subspecies, the latter now lost from island environments.
The origin of the word ‘reindeer’ comes from old Scandinavian for an animal for drawing sledges, and the North American word for this delightful animal, is ‘caribou’. This word is derived from a native Indian American word and translated it means ‘snow shoveller’. Reindeer do push snow aside with their hooves in search of their nourishment beneath, literally at grassroots level. Natural characteristics Colour-wise they may vary between a darkish brown to a brownish white, much depending upon their habitat – either in forests or in the snow-lands of the Arctic tundra. Such is camouflage. With a relatively dense woolly undercoat of insulating fur and a long-haired overcoat to shed snow, they cope easily with subzero temperatures in winter.
All species have reddish coloured noses – hence the Christmas song of ‘Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. Their noses are very sensitive to smells, which direct them to their winter source of food, reindeer moss, which is in fact a lichen, buried deep below snow cover. Interestingly, most species of reindeer are the only deer species in which both males and females possess antlers. Apart from the moose (also a member of the deer family) reindeers’ antlers are the longest.
Whereas the soles of my feet harden in tropical climates and soften in colder climes, reindeers’ hooves adopt the reverse pattern, softening in soft and wet tundra thaw conditions and hardening and sharpening to dig through the winter snow.
Faced with arctic and subarctic winter conditions, large reindeer herds travel southwards annually covering a distance of between 20km and 50km a day – such is their agility. Migrating in large numbers, much like the wildebeests on the African savannah grasslands, they perceive safety in numbers against would be predators.
Before the annual migration and during the early autumn months the ‘bull’ reindeer battle with each other, antlers locked, and the winner gains dominance of the herd of up to 20 females. The calves will be born in the next year’s summer months.
Unlike many other species of ruminants, reindeer have four stomach chambers to chew the cud in assisting their digestion of grasses, sedges, and the bark off the higher branches of willow and birch trees during the winter months. They actually leave a grazing line on the bark of trees much as giraffes do in Africa. One must remember that in winter they walk on snow that is several metres deep. Whilst humans and animals are pickled by mosquito bites in tropical countries so, in summer time in tundra areas, because of the melting permafrost pools and lakes form, mosquitoes or midges breed and devour as much as one litre of reindeer blood from each animal each week. Mankind and reindeer In Eurasia, the Saami (Sami) and the Tungus peoples began the domestication of reindeer during Bronze Age times, using them as a means of transport and meat for trading in the form of steaks and sausages. The reindeer skins provided clothing and shelter in the form of tents. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Saami people were alive and reindeer herding 210,000 years ago during the end of the Ice Ages.
Most Saami are now urban dwellers with only 10 per cent of their population actively involved in reindeer herding. Suppression has affected these people through national policies and discrimination in the early 20th century, to make inroads into their ancient territorial lands. So-called human progress has seen a diminution of these peoples’ environment and population during the ravages of World War 2 and subsequently through oil exploration, mining, dam building, logging of soft wood, the creation of practice bombing ranges, commercial development related to tourism and, inevitably, climate change.
Sadly, the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster caused atmospheric ‘fallout’ in their lands and lichens and mosses absorbed the radioactive toxins. This led to the systematic culling of 73,000 reindeer.
The growth of tourism and daily flights, especially at this time of the year, to take people and their children to see ‘Santa’ and ride on his reindeer sleigh has turned some Saami into mere marketing tools. Reindeer antlers are now, like rhino and elephant tusks, powdered down to create socalled aphrodisiacs and medicinal properties. Reindeer blood is even used to flavour local whiskeys and wines!
Where are we this Christmastide?
Wild reindeer herds are rapidly diminishing today primarily through climate change and the gradual melting of their permafrost environment in tundra lands. Sadly, research scientists at Oxford University have very recently revealed the death of over 60,000 reindeer on the Yamai Peninsula in Siberia in November 2013 as a thick crust of ice formed over their grazing grounds. There, through climate change, autumnal rainfall had increased, thus freezing temperatures prevented the animals from digging deep to root out food under the 27,000 square km of surface ice. This led to their mass starvation.
Whilst I sit before my glowing log fire this Christmas and hear the repeated drumming of the tune ‘Jingle Bells’, I shall be not dissimilar to Santa in the earlier mentioned poem, “The stump of his pipe, he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath …” and I expect Santa to bang loudly on my door with his sack of family presents. Unfortunately, Santa cannot descend my furiously logburning chimney, but I shall spare a prayer for and toast his reindeer for delivering Santa safely through the night sky.
To all my friends and readers in Sarawak and Sabah and especially to the staff of thesundaypost, as in the final line of the poem, ‘T’was the Night Before Christmas’ and in Santa’s own words, I wish, “A Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night!”