normadic herding sami

Normadic Herding-Sami In the Lands of the Midnight Sun lives the
Sami, formerly called the Lapps by the Scandinavians, are the indigenous
people of the far north of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia. Their
language is Finno-Ugric, related to Finnish and Hungarian. The Sami
people's traditional, semi-nomadic subsistence ways include reindeer
herding and fishing and hunting. Their clothing, handicrafts and music are
distinctive. The Sami are thought to descent from a people who reached
Finland after the end of the last Ice Age. When they got to Finland, at first
they occupied the southern parts of Finland, and from there, started to
migrate towards Lapland. Today there are more than 70,000 Sami, from
whom over 40,000 live in Norway, Sweden up to 25,000, in Finland 6,000
and in Russia 2,000. In Finland the birth-rate amongst Sami is slightly
above the average for the country in general, while there are no marked
differences in the death-rate. At the same time, the average size of family
is very much higher in the case of Sami, 5,7 persons as compared for 3,8
for the Finns, partly as a consequence of the high birth-rate and partly
due to the close ties prevailing between the members of the family. There
is a Sami Parliament spanning these borders, which participates in the
global indigenous peoples' movement at UN. Reindeer has
always been an important resource of food, clothing, tools and other
products to the Sami. They are milked at different stages of their nomad's
seasonal migration. The meat, fresh or preserved, is excellent, not least
because, so far as possible, it is obtained from selected animals which
are at their prime age (from 4 to 5 years) not, as with venison from wild
deer, when the hunter is able to bag his quarry. It is comparatively lean
and unusually rich in proteins and important vitamins. The tongue and
marrowbones are delicacies. The blood is used for gruel, pancakes and
sausages. Other parts are eaten fresh or preserved. The animal's own
stomach is cleaned and used to store food. It's intestines serve as
sausage casings. One animal produces about 40-65kg of meat. From
the pelt they can get the finest natural cold-weather clothing available. It

is still now a days widely used as such throughout the Arctic and is
indispensable for bedding and groundsheet. The dressed hide is made
into other garments- leggings, tunic and boots. The bones are used to
make knife-handles, sheaths, buttons and other small objects. The
sinews are traditionally used in the construction of things like sledges or
panniers, and for sewing leather objects. The traditional way of life
for the Sami has been the same for centuries. Their economy based
almost exclusively on hunting and fishing evolved into one dominated by
reindeer husbandry, as reindeer herds were tamed. The Sami led a
nomadic lifestyle based around the seasonal migration of their reindeer.
In summer time, the animals were herded into the mountains in search of
food and cooler temperatures, and in winter they were taken to the
shelter of the lowland forests. Until quite recently like many other peoples,
had to make their equipment themselves from local materials- wood,
bone, leather and roots. Metals for blades, knives and tools came from
the outside of their region, but only in small quantities. Their most
remarkable way of hunting was pitfalls. Lines of pitfalls were dug along
the reindeers' migratory track in places such as narrow valleys or tongues
of firm land in lakes and marshes which limited their freedom of
manoeuvre. These pits were oval and 2-3m long, 1-2m broad, 1-2m
deep. The hole at the top was carefully concealed by covering of twigs
with peat, leaves and moss on top of it. On April 1986, when the reactor
at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Russia exploded, it released a
plume of radioactive particles that floated north, then fell with the rain on
Scandinavia. At the time when Chernobyl blew up, the reindeer herdes
were in the mountains pasturing, marking calves. Later that summer
when they brought the reindeer in for slaughtering, many carcasses
registered thousands becquerels per kilogram of meat. The legal limit for
caesium-137 is 300 becquerels per kilogram. These slaughterhouses
were closed immediately. As a result of this, all the sudden, the Sami

could not eat their own meat. The slaughterhouses have re-opened
since, but much of the meat is still unfit for human consumption. Still the
Sami fear most that the contamination will have long-term consequences
for the reindeer. The peculiar ecology of the region and the way the
reindeer feed make them particularly vulnerable. The Sami way of life
revolves around reindeer. Many of the people fear that if they lose this
focus they will lose their cultural identity. The immediate problems
are solved. The fallout from Chernobyl did not fall evenly and some
animals avoided contamination. Of 21,000 reindeer slaughtered in
October, some 5,000 were below the 300 becquerel mark. So people had
enough reindeer meat to eat. If contamination at current levels takes nine
years to halve, as some scientists suggest, it will be two generations
before many of the reindeer will be clear. The classic reindeer
nomadism is now largely a matter of history. Snowmobiles (Skidoos),
cars, motorboats, even helicopters, controlled by telephones and
transceivers, are used to manage the reindeer and to carry the loads they
formerly bore. The paid hand has taken over from the unpaid member of
the family. Cabins have replaced tents at stages on the migration routes.
The Sami's grazing and calving grounds are threatened, or destroyed, by
vast developments to provide raw materials, energy, or even holiday
amusement, for other peoples. Dams have been build, to get the most
out of rivers, but the side effects of these dams are that salmons can not
migrate upstream anymore. Thereby Sami can not fish anymore, because
there is are more fishes. The economic, and thus the social, basis of the
old life is under permanent attack. But agriculture and forestry are still the
most important sources of income for the Sami, with about 50%
dependent on it as their main livelihood.