Scottish Santa Claus
Cameron McNeish shares the story of Scotland’s reindeer
AFTER a 40km (25-mile) bike ride I arrived deep in the woods. Deliberately shunning hard tarmac, I had negotiated my way by the bumpy forest byways of the northern Cairngorms.
The final few miles were all uphill and I was glad to reach my overnight destination, a sun-dappled glade with a little wooden hut perched on the slope just beyond it.
The wind in the trees had stilled and the evening calm was broken only by the childlike calls of geese flying overhead. I could hear them but I couldn’t see them for the trees. A sense of peace and solitude pervaded the place.
I found a flat bit of ground for my tent, brewed some tea and sipped it at the doorway of Utsi’s Hut.
Some photographs on the door told the story of the hut – grainy, dated images that showed a man in a khaki shirt and trilby-style hat sitting beside a bull reindeer.
The man in the photograph was Mikel Utsi, a Sàmi Laplander from north Sweden who, along with his American wife Dr Ethel Lindgren, had reintroduced reindeer to Scotland in 1952. It was one of the country’s most successful species reintroductions.
Mikel Utsi was born in Karesuando, the most northerly village in Sweden, in 1908. He spent his youth with the family reindeer herds, often migrating with the animals up to the mountains and coast of Norway.
For a number of years he operated restaurants before serving in the Swedish army and as a special constable. In 1947, he married, and shortly after moved to the UK.
Together Utsi and his wife founded the Reindeer Council of the United Kingdom, to “encourage experiments in reindeer breeding in suitable areas of Scotland and/or overseas” – and in that they were extremely successful.
In 1952, the couple reintroduced the first reindeer to Scotland and Utsi devoted the rest of his life to running the herd and sharing his knowledge of Sàmi customs. He was also a talented craftsman, making carvings in bone, antler and wood – a collection of which he gave to the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge.
Carbon dating of the remains of Scottish reindeer, found in ancient food middens, suggest reindeer lived in the Highlands up until around 800 years ago when, because of a combination of climate change and hunting pressures, they became extinct.
Reindeer could have remained extinct in Scotland,
like the wolf, bear, lynx and other creatures, but in April 1947, on their honeymoon, Mikel Utsi and Ethel Lindgren, gazed across the pinewoods of the Rothiemurchus Forest towards the distant swell of the Cairngorms and were instantly reminded of reindeer pastures in Utsi’s homeland, Lapland.
He later wrote, “…species of ground, rock and tree lichen, which are elsewhere the chief food of reindeer, were plentiful and of little use to other animals.”
Utsi and Lindgren decided to bring a small herd over from Sweden in what was initially to be an experiment to see if reindeer could survive in the Cairngorms. The first reindeer landed at Clydebank on April 1952, having travelled on the SS Sarek from Sweden. After a month in quarantine at Edinburgh Zoo, the reindeer were taken north to the Cairngorms.
The herd was initially located in a large paddock at Moormore in Glenmore but problems with insect infestation seriously affected the reindeer and Utsi decided they needed some elevation where conditions were a bit cooler. The Forestry Commission agreed to rent them an area just below the Northern Corries, at an elevation of about 500 metres (1640 feet).
Here the initial herd of 29 animals thrived in the Arctic conditions offered by the rolling Grampians.
Reindeer are remarkable creatures and well adapted to living in intensely cold conditions. The hair of their fur is hollow and an excellent insulator, trapping the air warmed by their body. Inside their noses is a very efficient heat exchanger, warming the cold air on its way in against the hot air being breathed out. They have a similar system with the blood in their legs.
They can feed in extremely harsh conditions, pulling up lichens from underneath the snow. During the snow-free months reindeer will eat grass, cotton grass, twigs of bushes and shrubs and other forms of lichen.
In the early years, Mikel Utsi spent much of his time living in a small wooden cabin high in the Rothiemurchus
Forest, where he could be close to his antlered charges. He even built the cabin from the packing cases the reindeer had been transported in.
“One man can look after a large herd alone for much of the year if there is no outside interference,” he wrote. “In Lapland, dogs help with the herding, but at Glenmore, the reindeer are controlled by a voice they recognise or by tit-bits of special food they have learned to like.”
I lay in my tent and pondered the life of this Sàmi herdsman who had left such a legacy in the Cairngorms.
In the 1950s, his hut would have felt considerably more remote than it does now – there was no bridge across the Allt Mor river then, and the public road ran out at Coylumbridge.
I won’t say any more about the exact location of the hut, but I will tell you about the one and only time I met Mikel Utsi. He died two years after I moved to Aviemore in 1977 and his wife, Dr Lindgren, passed away in 1988.
It was the week leading up to Christmas, 1976. Along with an old pal called Peter Lumley, I was camped on a sheltered hillside close to the rocky pass called Chalamain Gap in the Northern Cairngorms. Snow lay thick, a full moon hung above Cairn Gorm like a bright lantern and the evening sky was ablaze with stars. Our dinner was cooking on a lightweight paraffin stove.
As we shared a preprandial dram, some curious sounds took our attention. A series of low whistles and muffled calls, mixed with strange grunting and clicking sounds. And we were sure we heard what sounded like an Alpine cow bell.
Pete peeked out the door of the tent.
A dozen or so reindeer were padding past our tent, shaggy and hugely antlered
“Wow,” he said. “Have a look at this...”
A dozen or so reindeer were padding past our tent, off-white, shaggy and hugely antlered, their broad feet barely making an impression on the snow surface.
Walking along behind them, herding them with his medley of whistles, was an elderly man dressed in what appeared to be the colourful national dress of Lapland. It was an extraordinary scene, right out of a Christmas card, and for a few moments I expected the reindeer to take to the sky, pulling the small Santa Claus figure in tow.
He waved to us and we waved back. I seem to recall we exchanged brief greetings and it was some time later I learned the reindeer herder was none other than Mikel Utsi. It had been a memorable encounter.
When Mikel Utsi passed away his wife, Dr Ethel Lindgren, took over the running of the herd with the help of a young couple called Tilly and Allan Smith.
When Dr Lindgren died in 1988, the Smiths took over the herd, splitting them between the Cairngorms and the Cromdale hills near Glenlivet. This helped in the management of breeding and prevention of disease. I recently spoke to Fiona Smith, Tilly and Allan’s daughter.
“We lease some land near Cromdale and we use it for winter grazing,” she said. “We put some of the herd there from September onwards. It’s an ideal area with an abundant supply of reindeer moss.”
To this day, the Smiths lead a busy life, not only managing the herd but on their farm where they work with a wide range of animals including Soay sheep, wild boar and Belted Galloway cattle. Much of the reindeer work these days is organised by Fiona, who told me more than 30,000 people visit the reindeer every year.
“The reindeer are a popular attraction,” she says. Mikel Utsi would be proud.
During the months of November and December the tamer male reindeer go on tour. Travelling the length and breadth of the UK, these Christmas tours raise public awareness of the herd and help raise funds for the upkeep of the herd.
Some animals are trained to pull sleighs and have become used to performing in busy urban situations. As soon as the reindeer have completed their Christmas tours they are released back onto the mountain for the rest of the year, adding an extra spectacular dimension to the UK’S highest and most Arctic mountain range.