Today is the darkest day of the whole year, the sun rose 10.20 am and went down 13.40 pm. It´s quite dark the whole time and one is able to enjoy daylight for about six hours in total during the day. If you´re lucky and the sky is clear, moonlight makes it possible to be active outside in the evening without additional lighting and you might even see the northern lights! Light and sound pollution is minimal here in Hossa so nightly walks observing the starry skies and listening the complete silence is very enjoyable. After the winter solstice the amount of daylight begins to increase and snowy landscapes bathing in sunlight are to be expected.

Early winter is a busy period of time in the life of a reindeer herder, I´d like to scratch the surface concerning the wintery tasks that take place at the moment. Remember that it´s possible for you to participate in this traditional source of livelihood and learn more about it as part of your active holiday here in Hossa.

 

 

 

 

 

During this time of year the reindeer start gathering up at certain pastures, after food and to get cover against predators.  After the herd is driven to a pen, they are separated for slaughter, male calves and elderly females being the ones that are mostly sold for meat. Getting the reindeer inside the pen is not as easy as one might think, hard conditions set some limits and the method is walking in a line and sometimes preventing the animals from escaping the drive can be hard. Movable fences set up for the purpose and snow-mobiles are used to make this task easier.

If there´s enough snow at this time, those animals that will kept and fed inside the corral through the winter, are loaded in a vehicle and transported home and put inside the pen. It´s time to start the daily feeding for about four months at least, through the roughest winter. We´ve got about 30 reindeer in our corral at the moment but a lot more are still wandering somewhere in the wilderness. We´re keeping our thumbs up that they appear to some of the pastures to take them home as there´s already up to 80 cm of snow at some places already. Intensive forestry has significantly reduced the amount of winter pastures here so additional feeding is widely used. At one time, reindeers used to spend their whole year out in the wild but still they are on their own for most of the time.

Finally, I want to introduce our very special reindeer Suvi. She´s a 1,5 year old female reindeer who was left an orphan as a calf. We fed her with a baby bottle so she is very used to humans and if you leave the door open, she´ll walk right inside the house! Detailed post concerning her full story will follow later on.