Although I’ve inhaled the pure air of Finland for no more than a few months, I’ve had an array of happy adventures while there. If you’ve read other posts in this blog, you may recall I’ve flown above Finland’s magical countryside on Midsummer Eve, watching bonfire after bonfire being set ablaze along the shores of the glistening lakes that slid beneath our wings. More and more fires appeared until hundreds of flames flickered in the dusk (read that here). Torching bonfires on the first evening of summer is a long-held Finnish tradition. I’ve also been a crafty opponent against a well-prepared doctoral student and within hours paid an unconventional price for that service (read that here), and I’ve bused to Leningrad with my professor friend, Martti, in a crowded bus full of tourists to sample life in Russia (read that here, and here).

Early one summer while I was living in Kuopio, Martti and I headed to northern Finland, reaching Lapland and traveling up farther beyond the Arctic Circle to spend a few days in endless daylight. Watching the sun sail through its entire oval in the sky is an awesome experience. No matter what time of day or night you look up, old Sol is right there, maybe swinging far to the south at midday, or slanting lower as it veers westward and northward in the afternoon on its long downward glide to skim above the northern horizon and begin rising again to repeat its voyage, doing this day after day, never disappearing.

A new adventure

A major highlight of that trip developed when we plopped ourselves smack into the middle of a reindeer roundup. Such roundups are common events in Lapland, but I knew nothing about them until I became part of one, learning as I went along. Roughly 200,000 reindeer wander freely through Lapland, grazing pretty much where they want, and munching on whatever their noses lead them to. Yet, like many wild animals, the reindeer usually stay within their self-defined areas and rarely venture more than roughly 35 miles in any direction.

Even though they are free to roam, the reindeer in Lapland are semi‑domesticated animals, and every one is owned by a reindeer herder. As you can imagine, keeping track of which animals in a wandering herd belong to whom requires effort. This is neatly accomplished by periodic reindeer roundups. Usually word of such events is kept mum, and schedules are rarely given out to other than those directly involved (see here) but thanks to a stroke of luck Martti had been tipped off about this one. His friend at a Lapland wildlife research station, knowing we were headed up that way, passed along the information.

Confusion on the road

Our getting to the roundup was not part of the fun. The place was hard to find. Martti had been given general directions, but roads in rural Lapland aren’t necessarily well marked, and in some cases they aren’t marked at all, and this was before the availability of cell phones or other GPS aids. So we jammed about the countryside, Martti pushing the pedal on his Mercedes as we roared into one blind alley after another, stopping at the rare dwelling and getting conflicting directions, buzzing here and flitting there, our frustration growing as our frantic search extended to well over an hour. The roundup was to begin at midnight, and we knew we would be late. Finally, miraculously, we got to our destination, some forty-five minutes after the roundup had started.

The roundup we joined was relatively small, but the place was buzzing with activity. The reindeer had already been herded into a large corral, where a couple hundred of the animals milled about, the bulls and cows snorting, the calves making little honking noises. (I’m using Finnish terminology. If you prefer, substitute bucks, does, and fawns)

The entire herd in this roundup was owned by only two reindeer herders, and the ownership of each individual deer (except the calves) could be determined by the earmark it carried, the unique mark of its owner. The primary goal of this roundup was to identify the ownership of each calf. Secondary goals were to check the health of each animal and to get a complete count of how many reindeer belonged to each owner.

The owner of each calf was determined by a simple and foolproof method, a  process that had already begun when Martti and I arrived. Something like a dozen men were working in the corral, separating cows with the earmark of one owner and herding them into a pen on one side of the corral. Cows belonging to the other owner were also being separated and herded into a pen on the opposite side of the corral. The remaining bulls and calves were cordoned off in yet another segment of the corral.

Getting dressed for the job

Martti and I reported for duty, and the organizers of the roundup provided us with coveralls and matching gloves, mine an eye-catching green. Then the fun began. Because youngsters in the wild always stick close to their mamas and don’t like separations, there was plenty of impatient snorting and honking going on around us.

After all the cows were separated and confined, men stood guard by the opening to each pen, and on signal a few calves were released. Not surprisingly, amid the snorts and honks, the youngsters made  unerring beelines to their own mothers. They were allowed to enter the proper pen to rub against their mothers, or to suckle. Men inside the pen, having thus made the proper identification, labeled each calf with a yellow tag, and hoisted it into the arms of a transporter who carried the calf to the man keeping tally. After completing his job, the teller passed the young deer to the next station to have its ear marked. More calves were released, and the sequence was repeated over and over.

Martti and I were assigned to be transporters of calves from the pen where they were identified to the tally keeper, a task I accomplished repeatedly without mishap, and with enthusiasm. It was more fun than you can imagine. I think I grinned the entire time. Martti took a break during the action and snapped a picture of me doing my job. The photo was taken about 2 a. m. No flash needed.

We transported calves until there were no more to transport. By that time my muscles were sending emergency reports and it was a relief to ease out of coveralls and gloves. Martti and I then followed his friend to the wildlife research station for a tour and a bit of chitchat, during which I learned more about Lapland. After I told a young lady how much I was enjoying the twenty-four hours of sunshine, I asked her how she managed to endure the winter with its twenty-four hours of darkness, day after day.

“It’s not dark in winter,” she corrected me. “White snow is everywhere, and the moon and stars add plenty of light. One can see so many details. And of course there’s the miraculous aurora borealis, which flares high in the sky at least every other night. It’s a beautiful time. You should come see it sometime.”

That sounded good to me, so I put a little box beside that thought. So far, the box hasn’t been checked.