History | Nature
Lemmings From The Sky
The locust swarm phenomenon of the Nordics
I first heard of them from my mother. I turned on the tap water to plunge my head in and get a drink, like all Norwegian children would do. We have one of the world’s most excellent tap water, and what is exported as first class bottled water around the world, is by many Norwegians regularly used to mop the floor.
My mother rushed forward to turn it off. “Stop! Don’t drink it. We have to boil it first.” What? Boil the water? Why on earth would someone boil water before drinking it? My mother turned me around and smiled slightly. “It’s the lemmings. They’re flooding the mountain and we have to boil the water for now. The municipality just announced it.”
The stories we grow up with
From then on I learned that there’s a small rodent infesting Norwegian mountain tops. They’re always there, as tasty staples for owls, foxes and eagles. But every three to four years or so, they tend to explode in numbers, and just take over everything in areas with some altitude.
This is what’s called a “lemming year.” To this day, no one has really been able to prove scientifically why this explosion of the lemming population occurs. And by explosion I literally mean it. Norwegian…
