A Pet Reindeer

Sailing along Norway’s magnificent coast — Part 5

Introduction

Today we meet Nils from the indigenous people of the far north, his pet reindeer and see the traditional homes they use in the bleakest of landscapes.

The Sami

Nils with his trusty reindeer — Credit: Author

Nils, the Sami man, comes down with his family and herd of reindeer every summer for the tourists to greet him.

The Sami — formerly known as Laplanders — are the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia and Russia. Like the Eskimos, who changed their name to Inuit, the Lapps changed their name to Sámi, which is a word from their own language. It’s a language that belongs to the same family as Finnish and Hungarian.

In the bus, we were told how to greet Nils in his own language. It was something like “borre baivi” and means “good day”.

These people have their own lifestyle and traditional food and clothing. Nils, dressed in his traditional clothing complete with tri-pointed hat, and chatted with the tourists — at least with those, who could speak Norwegian.