Lapland and the sami people

In short, Lapland runs across northern Noway, Sweeden, Finland all the way into Russia. It is inhabited by the Sami people who are indigenous to the region. Traditionally, they were and some still are herders, herding reindeer from region to region with the changing of the seasons.

Even though, few are still nomad, they still owe most of their survival to reindeer which provides food, clothing....and Cheese :) They have a very interesting history surviving in barren regions of cold, where little could be cultivated. There are different types of Sami's mountain sami's, river sami's, Forrest sami's......

Like most indigenous populations, they were persecuted by Christians and other settlers and up until not so long ago the Sami language was banned in schools. This is obviously no longer the case, and the sami's now hold favourable rights towards hunting, land owing and reindeer.

We spent one day getting acquainted with a very proud and tall Samish family head who showed us his moose (Arthur and his herd of reindeer). He invited us for lunch, wehre we had the local delicacy (reindeer) and we all got a little sami Shamanistic blessing. I was asked to return the following year for the milking season :) Something about me must say good milking skills.

If you can't tell who the Sami guy is, he's about 1m taller than the rest of us and is the only one not wearing 7 layers of clothes, in fact i think he's not even wearing gloves!