American Scientist the Magazine of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society

A reprint from American Scientist the magazine of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society This reprint is provided for personal and noncommercial use. For any other use, please send a request to Permissions, American Scientist, P.O. Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, U.S.A., or by electronic mail to [email protected]. ©Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society and other rightsholders Marginalia Mining the Boreal North Nancy Langston few days after Christmas, have thrived in the boreal forest. With- A I took the train south from Resource extraction out people, reindeer might not have Kiruna, a small mining town 200 ki- thrived as well. lometers above the Arctic Circle in Reindeer are well suited to the tai- Sweden. All three train cars were filled decisions are not ga’s frigid winters. They can maintain a with Asian tourists drawn to Kiruna thermogradient between body core and by the promises of shiny brochures: simply about the environment of up to 100 degrees, “See the Aurora Borealis in the last in part because of insulation provid- pristine wilderness in Europe! Come wilderness ed by their fur, and in part because of to Sweden’s pure nature!” counter-current vascular heat exchange I stood at the window and watched preservation or systems in their legs and nasal passag- the taiga—the boreal forest—slip by es. Cold is little problem; the challenge through the polar night. The moon rose development is finding food. Reindeer migration pat- over stunted spruce and birch trees terns reduce some, but not all, of their bent beneath drifts of snow. From in- vulnerability to food scarcity. side the warmth of the train, you could Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Sámi herders do not just follow the imagine the land outside as the frozen Peninsula of Russia—since the retreat of reindeer. They have negotiated complex Arctic wilderness pictured in the tourist the glaciers. relationships with the animals, basing brochures, protected from human influ- For centuries, urban governments an eight-season migration pattern on the ence by bitter cold and distance. have used the idea of the taiga as un- reindeer’s seasonal cycles. From March But my partner and I had just spent inhabited and remote to promote colo- until April, the pregnant female rein- the week with Sámi hosts on a farm in nization of the north for its resources. deer began to move out of lowland for- Puoltsa, a village 27 kilometers from Open-pit iron mines proposed for ests toward mountain pastures. In April Kiruna along the Kalix River. Even Sámi territory in the ore-rich landscape to May, calves are born, and the cows though daytime temperatures rarely near Kiruna, Sweden, continue to be choose spring pastures where snow rose above –36 degrees Celsius, the justified by similar logic. The Kiruna melts early, allowing them to supple- landscape that looked so silent from the region contains the largest under- ment their lichen diet with leaves, grass train buzzed with activity. Wood had to ground iron ore mine in the world; 90 and herbs. In June, reindeer select ripar- be chopped, guests had to be fetched, percent of all iron ore mined in Europe ian vegetation near marshes and brooks, reindeer and horses had to be fed sup- comes from here. From the Swedish allowing them to quickly regain weight plemental hay, snowmobiles had to be government’s perspective, mining is lost during the long winter. From June tinkered with. The taiga is anything inevitable because the world needs to July, when parasitic flies become a but pristine wilderness: It is an inhab- iron ore for steel, and the government problem in the lowlands, reindeer move ited landscape where the indigenous needs mining profits to fund the social up into high, windy mountain mead- Sámi and their reindeer have lived ever programs integral to Swedish society. ows where they can find relief from since the ice retreated 10,000 years ago. But from the Sámi perspective, the both insects and heat. When August Yet the wilderness perception persists, proposed mines would make it im- comes, reindeer build up fat and mus- particularly now when a tourist boom possible to continue reindeer herding, cle to prepare for the winter and begin makes it profitable. ending thousands of years of success- their migration to lower pastures, where Why does a flawed idea of wilder- ful cultural adaptation to the taiga. the rutting period commences. During ness matter? It renders invisible the the rut, cows continue to accumulate Sámi, indigenous people who have Environmental Histories of the Taiga reserves for the winter, while the bulls lived in what they call Sápmi—northern As the inland ice retreated from Sá- use much of their stored body fat and pmi some 10,000 years ago, reindeer muscle weight, which they need to re- (Rangifer tarandus) followed the edge plenish during the brief autumn season. Nancy Langston is the King Carl XVI Gustaf Pro- fessor of Environmental Science at Umeå Univer- of the ice as it retreated northward, When the snows deepen in early winter, sity in Sweden. Her current research can be found and the ancestors of the Sámi people the reindeer migrate back toward low- at sustaininglakesuperior.com. Her most recent came with them. The anthropologist land forests where they can dig through book is Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and Piers Vitebsky has argued that with- the snow cover to reach their main win- the Legacy of DES (Yale University Press, 2010). out reindeer, human cultures could not ter food source: ground lichens. From 98 American Scientist, Volume 101 © 2013 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction with permission only. Contact [email protected]. December through March, the coldest season, reindeer graze for lichens and berry plants in the coniferous forests. These migration patterns paid little at- tention to national borders; to find the best forage, reindeer often crossed from summer pastures in Norway into Swe- den and Finland winter territories. Originally hunters of reindeer rather than herders, the Sámi shifted to herding semi-domesticated reindeer after European incursions into their lands reduced their subsistence resources. In the 9th century, Norse chieftains moved onto Sámi lands and began tax- ing the Sámi. Records from a chieftain called Ottar, who was in the employ of King Alfred the Great of England, give some sense of the annual taxes demanded from the Sámi: “A man of the highest rank has to contribute the skins of fifteen martens and five reindeer and one bear and forty bushels of feathers and a tunic made of bearskin or otterskin and two ships’ cables … made either of whaleskin or of seal- The northern reaches of Finland, Norway, Sweden and a portion of Russia are the ancestral home skin.” Kevin Crossley-Holland also of the Sámi, nomadic reindeer herders. Although this region, Sápmi, is often billed as pristine notes that Ottar mentioned that the wilderness, it in fact bustles with activity, even near the winter solstice, when temperatures Sámi had trained reindeer as decoys often stay below –30 degrees Celsius. The Sámi people lie at a complex and indistinct boundary to bring the wild herds closer for eas- formed between natural communities such as reindeer, domestication of these same animals, ier hunting, suggesting that a shift in marks of civilization such as snowmobiles, and industrialization and mining brought by outsid- subsistence practices from hunting to ers. Moose often come down into villages during winter. (All photographs by the author.) herding reindeer had already begun. Trappers and traders came to Sápmi in Pite Lappmark, close to the Norwe- their escape. Much of their territory to capitalize on the growing European gian border. Silver revenues might help near the mine became depopulated. market for furs, selling firearms to the fund war expenses that burdened the In 1673, the Swedish king encour- Sámi. The Sámi intensified hunting, Swedish state, so in 1635, mining began aged Swedish citizens from the south depleting the boreal forests of fur- at the Nasafjäll works. to move north and colonize the Sámi bearing animals and reindeer. As sub- Transport of ore to smelters and then area. Few Swedes, however, were in- sistence resources dwindled, the Sámi to markets was vital for mining devel- terested in moving to a place they saw began to domesticate wild reindeer, opment. The Swedes believed that the as remote, barren and inhospitable, and by the 17th century, herding of Sámi were too weak and lazy to dig even when the king promised relief semi-domesticated reindeer had large- ore but were useful for transporting from military service and taxation. ly replaced hunting of wild reindeer. that ore. Sámi were ordered to use their The Swedes who moved into the forest The north, in European eyes, seemed reindeer to carry ore 60 kilometers be- found settled farming nearly impos- empty of people (even though the Sámi tween the Nasafjäll mine and the smelt- sible in the harsh climate, so they began provided essential taxes), and that emp- ing works. The Sámi refused, fearing hunting and fishing on Sámi lands and tiness justified it becoming Sweden’s the work would interfere with reindeer cutting hay in winter reindeer pastures. colony for resource extraction—first for herding cycles. Swedish workers de- The Sámi herding territories and fishing furs, then for minerals, timber and en- scribed how they forced the Sámi to grounds were squeezed by the new im- ergy. In 1542, the Swedish king Gustav comply: “We tied them to a couple of migrants, but when conflicts arose, the Vasa proclaimed that “all permanently timbers, pushed them down into the Sámis were able to assert their commu- uninhabited land belongs to God, Us rapids a few times and then pulled nal property rights in Swedish courts.

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