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Article Excerpt
FOR THE SAMI OF NORTHERN SCADINAVIA and the Kola Peninsula of Russia (see Figure 1), the reindeer (rangifer tarandus tarandus) has played an integral part in survival and livelihood in the sub-arctic. Over the last millenium, herding and husbandry of reindeer have developed among the Sami into a viable livelihood in a modern cash market economy. Although the majority of Sami today do not rely on reindeer as a primary source of income (only an estimated 10-15 percent of Sami in Finland are full-time herders [Nuorgam 1999:4]), the image of the Sami and the reindeer have become synonymous.
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This article examines changes in reindeer herding and husbandry as it has adapted from an intensive system to its current extensive form in the modern cash market economy. It also looks at how this shift has affected those Sami in northern Scandinavia who continue to derive either most or some of their income from reindeer herding. Concerned primarily with Sami issues in Finland, Norway, and Sweden, this work is based on previously documented sources as well as this author's own observations during fieldwork in the northern Sami village of Kultima (see Figure 2), located in the Finnish province of Enontekio (summer 1999).
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Several key elements are at work here: the adoption and use of modern tools and technology by herders, the ongoing issues of land use rights especially as they relate to herders, tourism, and the forest industry, and the role of governmental and European Union regulations in transforming herding and slaughtering practices. Many of the changes that have allowed reindeer herding to continue to compete economically in the modern market have served only as short-term solutions to growing problems of multiple use of the northern regions. While modern processes and technologies, such as supplementary feeding and the snowmobile, have allowed for increased herd size on decreased pasture areas, they have only delayed many of the same problems they sought to solve in addition to increasing the economic burden on the reindeer herder. As a growing number of outside economic institutions, such as forestry and tourism, have continued to vie with reindeer herding in the north for access to and use of land, the Sami, like many pastoral groups, have been forced to give way. When such change occurs, reindeer herding is in some way harmed. Either the size of grazing pastures decreases along with the herd size and its ability to support the herder, or, if herd size does not decrease, productivity or at least potential productivity will.
Continual encroachment on pastures coupled with ever-rising overhead costs necessary to maintain reindeer herding as a viable livelihood have led to an overall decrease in the total number of active herders. More and more the small-scale reindeer herder is being replaced by larger, more corporate forms of reindeer management, which are better able to absorb costs associated with the extensive form of herding. This change has created a funnel effect over the last forty years in which reindeer herds are increasingly in the hands of a select few. The small-scale herder, once the majority, is today often forced to work for large owners or to seek outside wage labor to supplement his income from reindeer herding. In some cases, small herders are forced to abandon herding altogether as the economic costs of maintaining reindeer have become too great.
By gaining a better understanding of the current situation of reindeer herding, we can then examine how it has been shaped through historical and economic processes. In tutu, encounters between pastoral societies and ever-expanding trade and political power of capitalist firms and polities can be better understood (see also: Ingold 1980, Hjort 1990, Caro 1994, Gilles and Gefu 1990, Beach 1990, Casimir 1992).
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
A basic understanding of the historical relationship between the Sami and reindeer is necessary to comprehend how reindeer herding has made the transition into the modern era (i.e. the period from approximately 1960 to the present). A number of theories address the development of herding practices including ideas of diffusion from Siberia or independent development in Scandinavia (Soppela 1999:2). Many though trace the development of reindeer herding from the hunting of wild-deer and the domestication of decoy and draft animals (Beach 1990: 260, Collinder 1949:88, Ingold 1980:82-112).
Reindeer have always been an important resource for northern inhabitants of the area as can be seen in the reconstructed annual cycle of reindeer hunting groups (see Figure 3). Throughout the year, reindeer were regularly hunted by driving them through wooden or stone fences into water or pits where they could easily be taken, trapping them in strategically placed pitfalls, or luring them close to hunters using decoy deer (Kuoljok 1993:10). Just as modern day herders invest in facilities such as reindeer fencing, early hunters invested in systems of hunting pits. Remains of these pits continue to be a common and visible feature of the landscape in areas where they were systematically dug in order to intercept the deer's seasonal migrations along fixed routes. While conducting fieldwork in Kultima, I was able to see first hand the remains of pits, which were readily apparent whenever one went a short distance into the forest.
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The trapping of wild reindeer in pits from the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (ca. 1000 BC-500 AD) appears to have been confined to the conifer region near the mountains and sub-alpine zone (Mulk 1997:28). The sub-alpine zone consists of the floral region between the coniferous zone covering most of northern Scandinavia and the climatic timberline, that is the highest elevation level where forests can grow under optimal local conditions (Wielgolaski 1975:62). Within these areas of overlap, between the sub-alpine and coniferous zones or near the mountainous regions, systems of hunting pits were abundant. During the early centuries of the Christian era though, hunting-pit systems began to increase in the sub-alpine zone, and more pits were constructed around the tree line and progressively further up into mountain valleys as systems grew larger (Mulk 1997:28). This economic specialization appears to have reached a peak during the middle of the first millenium AD, when significant numbers of pits were constructed in the mountain regions.
Reindeer hides and other products were traded to central Europe throughout the medieval period along with pelts of other fur bearing animals in exchange for goods such as grain, cloth, and metal implements (Scheffer 1674:70). The extensive pitfall systems found throughout Lapland for trapping wild reindeer may have been constructed in order to meet the demands for this market thus contributing to the decline of wild herds (Hvarfner 1965:326-7, Ingold 1974:525). The eventual abandonment of the pitfall systems during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may in fact be correlated with the decline of the wild reindeer population and their replacement by pastoral herds. It has also been speculated that in the aftermath of the Black Death in northern Norway (in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries [Larsen 1948:202-4]) survivors began to collect more tamed deer, keep them close, and migrate with them since there were no longer enough people to hunt (drive) reindeer effectively using the old techniques (Soppela 1999:3). Due to the decreased human population and previous over-hunting of wild reindeer, people no longer may have been able to subsist solely on resources gained from hunting. Following this interpretation, an intensive form of reindeer herding began to develop from these conditions and replaced the previous hunting oriented system of providing subsistence as well as income for herding families through the sale of reindeer meat, antler, and skins to European markets.
INTENSIVE VERSUS EXTENSIVE HERDING SYSTEMS
Generally, therefore, reindeer pastoralism developed among the Sami relatively recently, possibly in response to increased pressure on wild reindeer populations. Reindeer husbandry may be classified as either "intensive" or "extensive." The main characteristic of intensive herding practices is that for the majority of the year herders are in close proximity to their animals and keep them together, especially during the spring and summer. Also, in comparison to extensive herding practices, intensively herded groups of reindeer are relatively small numbering in the hundreds (Collinder 1949:4). Figure 4 serves as an example of the annual cycle of intensive herding groups and the various activities carried out throughout the year.
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By contrast, extensive herding gives reindeer relative freedom to range, particularly during the spring and fall. The freer the reindeer are, the more likely they are to gather into small groups, often mixing with the stock of other herders. Extensively herded reindeer are apt to grow "wilder" or less tractable undermining the symbiotic relationship between herder and reindeer inculcated by the intensive form. However, the extensive form, which has dominated herding practices since the mid 1960s, has some...
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