Dashing through the snow

On a one reindeer open sleigh
O'er fields we go
Laughing all the way...

I had expected the reindeer sleigh ride to be sedate and a little bit boring.  We'd been warned that it could get quite cold as you don't do anything so I had extra layers on.  Our first transport was more modern as we piled into a minivan to get to Torassieppi.  We visited the old homestead which still has quite a bit of the original furniture and equipment.  It was originally built in 1847 by two Russian families (brothers) who adopted the Sami lifestyle.  Once they got to 13 kids and 7 kids, they decided that it was simply too crowded so the sawed the house in half and moved part of it a couple of 100 metres away (I don't understand how this made any more room?)  The same family have been there ever since until recently.  For some time it was the post office in the area and the family ran a reindeer taxi service.  It would take about four day to get to Kittila (the drive that took me an hour) so they had hotels along the way.  I think the taxi service ran until the 1950s at least.  The last owner was quite a well known artist and has some very nice tapestries.  But it is now owned by the hotel where I am staying (it's more of a lodge than a hotel really).

We then moved to another building where we had a slide show about the life of reindeer and a bit about the Sami reindeer herders.  There isn't enough food for more than c.200,000 reindeer in the winter so they have an annual round up and cull in September (I think).  I felt much better about having eaten Dancer, Prancer and Blitzen when I heard this.  The reindeer are marked on their ears to identify who they belong to - each person has their own pattern - and the Sami can tell the difference from quite a distance away.  The reindeer are very quick.  They race them like horse except instead of riding on top, you ski behind them.  The record for the fastest reindeer is one kilometre in one minute and 16 seconds (for a horse, it's a bout a minute).  The problem is that the reindeer are still semi-wild so they might decide to go in a different direction than the skier behind them wants.

After practicing our reindeer lassoing skills on a wooden reindeer, we then hopped into our own sleigh each.  You can't really steer the the sleigh but you can make it go faster by hitting the rope across its' backside.  We started off all tied together but when we reached the track with no forks in it, they untied us and let us loose.  Mine walked along nicely and then decided to put on a bit of speed by breaking into a trot which I hadn't expected so I may have let out a bit of a 'ooooo'.  It was very exciting when we got to a downhill slide (almost a 'woooohoooo'). 

We had lunch in a canvas kotta (some kind of potato and reindeer stew - it seemed a bit rude to be eating our transport's cousins), and then back into the sleighs for the return trip.  My reindeer was very well behaved and I had an uneventful trip home.  The others, however, kept trying to go off the track (to the shouts of 'nee nee nee' ) and one poor reindeer fell over and then the reindeer in the sleigh behind it tried to climb into their sleigh.  I was talking to one of the other guides a few days later and mentioned we'd had a bit of trouble with the reindeer - she'd heard all about it so I guess they are usually better behaved.  It made for a very exciting and laughter filled trip.

Back at the hotel, we got to saw off our own bit of reindeer antler, use the soldering iron to write something on it and make it into a key ring.  Our guide, Scotty, bought us all a drink so I had another hot chocolate with minttu.