Saturday, February 25, 2006
Sami Tour
The Sami tour was great. The reindeer farm, where the visit was, felt extremely cold due to the strong wind blowing. Nils-Anders, who is a Sami and owner of the farm, asked if I got enough clothes after seeing my legs shiver. He further explained that due to the cold weather, he has to wear 2 layers of long-johns, 1 pair of trousers and 1 layer of reindeer-hide outer pants. And here I was wearing only 1 layer of woolen long-john and 1 pair of jeans. The other visitors were Swedish but since I was there, Nils-Anders spoke in English sometimes. But I thought it was very kind of Lars (a fellow visitor) to translate for me most of the time when Anders was speaking in Swedish.
Feeding the reindeers was fun. They are not very tall animals and, therefore, not very intimidating. They are shy at times: a slight wave of the hand will send them away. They feed on some kind of moss. I had them on my hand and they just crowd around and nimble at your hand.
Next, we entered the teepee. We sat around a fire and on reindeer hide. Some reindeer meat soup and bread was served. Anders said that the front of us is Hawaii (there was a roaring fire) and the back of us is Greenland (you can hear the cold wind blowing through the slits). He told us some culture stories. Like not peeing into a fire (it is believed to cause impotence) and pointing a kettle towards the back of the teepee while its content boil. He also shared some of his thoughts on marriage, and perspectives of life.
The Sami cultural interactions really added value to this trip. I wanted to know something about the aborigines of Lappland; not come here and go back with memories of fun activities only.
