Not just Santa who relies on reindeer...
I WAS after brown bear and the Northern Lights, but when a beautiful elf named Fairy Lights jumped on board the coach from the airport and named it Figgy Pudding, I thought ‘When in Lapland’.
I know, I’m very shallow, but Fairy Lights looked very fit for 340 years of age, and she said that she was really looking forward to her 350th birthday because that was when elves get their pointed ears.
After my initial delight, I soon realised that my hotel choice may not have been the best - the coach was full of kids on their way to see Santa. Thankfully the elfin commentary contained some gems.
Fairy Lights announced, “All the reindeer in Lapland are owned by someone,” and she wasn’t meaning the big fella with red clothes.
There are many more reindeer in Lapland than people but, they are all individually managed, herded when necessary and provide an economy for the native Sami people, rather like the buffalo at one time provided for the Native Americans. Food, milk, clothing, tools, travel and, with the Sami, tourism.
Each herd is indicated by the owner’s earmark cut in the time-honoured way with a knife. Ouch.
The Sami people are spread throughout the northernmost areas of Russia, Finland, Sweden, and Norway. Their language has much in common with Polish and it is thought they might have originally migrated north from there, although another theory is that they moved across from Asia.
Reindeer graze on various lichens in the winter, as well as other ground lichens and tree lichens. They can also survive on green winter plants and overwintering shoots and roots. During the summer they graze on various types of grass, sedges, herbs and leaves from the willow and birch.
The reindeer is a true connoisseur, selecting certain species and preferring to feed on the youngest growth on the plant. In this way it can digest the food more easily, as the young parts of the plant do not contain as much vegetable fibre.
During the autumn, reindeer are very partial to fungi, and spread over large areas looking for them. When there is no snow on the ground, the reindeer build up a significant fat reserve in order to survive the winter.
The reindeer has a very good sense of smell, and can detect the smell of reindeer lichen under a 70cm deep snow covering, or more if the snow is porous. Reindeer are adapted to long, cold winters. Every part of a reindeer is covered in fur - they even have a hairy muzzle. The individual hairs on the body are hollow, providing excellent insulation.
The reindeer also has a type of heat exchanger in its legs, with the venous blood being heated up by the arterial blood in special vascular balls. The blood that comes from the hooves has been cooled down significantly, but is warmed up before it reaches the heart again. As a result, reindeer do not suffer from hypothermia.
Reindeer also have plenty of blood vessels in their nostrils,which means that the air they breathe in is warmed up and that heat loss via the exhaled air is minimised.
The reindeer belongs to the deer family Cervidae, and in this family the bulls tend to have antlers while the cows do not. The antlers are shed and grow back again every year. In the case of reindeer, however, both genders have antlers, and the calves grow antlers during their first summer.
Reindeer bulls use their antlers to impress the reindeer cows and scare off other bulls during the rutting season (September/October). The reindeer bulls shed their antlers in November, at the end of the rutting season.
Reindeer cows, on the other hand, retain their antlers during the winter. Using their antlers they can drive off much larger reindeer bulls from their pasture. The antlers provide the cows with a high status in the reindeer herd and are closely linked to pregnancy.
The cows do not lose their antlers until they have given birth to their calves in May. New antlers grow during the spring, at which time they are covered with velvet. The velvet protects the growing antler and contains blood vessels. Both sexes clean their antlers immediately before the rutting season.
Please don’t let your kids read this bit: reindeer meat is very good and as much as Fairy Lights enlightened us with her tales of foxy legends, she failed to point out that, as