Here in Massachusetts where I live you can find this gorgeous silvery green reindeer lichen on rocks, a staple food for reindeer* and a living reminder that hundreds of years ago herds of reindeer roamed this landscape. There is much archeological evidence that supports the presence of reindeer herds living in this part of Massachusetts hundreds of years ago, now unfortunately lost to history. These beautiful creatures are now confined to a smaller area of the planet today because of human encroachment and destruction of reindeer habitat, however, what still remains are ancient reindeer folktales that tie together landscapes we now think of as separate countries including: Finland, Russia, Greenland and Canada, and the United States (specifically Alaska) circling the arctic like a wide necklace made of woven strands of interconnected stories and antler bones that tell of a time when humans and reindeer lived together as one family.
Though I am no expert in reindeer folklore, nor the cultures I am about to share, I will just briefly offer a few interesting facts that particularly moved me, in order to reflect on the gift these folktales offer me personally in hopes that you might find them of value too.
“Caribou Mother”, also known in the Iglulik language as Pakitsumanga, is a folk heroine who appears in stories told among the Inuit of West Greenland and Canadian Baffin Island, Labrador, Hudson Bay and Eastern Canadian Arctic. Caribou Mother, or “the one with whom the caribou are”, watches over all the caribou only offering them to those humans who show respect for the animals. Among the Innu of Canada, there is a folk hero who plays a similar role known as the “Caribou Master”, a human man who falls in love with a caribou woman and becomes a caribou himself who then watches over all the caribou. In Alaska USA among the Gwich’in and Inupiat, there is a creation story about how people and the caribou were one before they separated and, since then, have always been relatives.
Among the indigenous Saami and Karelians of what we now know as Finland and Russia there is a widely known epic poem called the “Song of Vaadin” about a female reindeer, goddess and divine ancestor of the reindeer. Similarly, among the Saami tribes in Russia near to the Kuola Peninsula there is a folktale about an ancestor named Myandash who shapeshifts between human and reindeer.
Some believe that long before Santa charioted his herd of reindeer across the wintery skies it was a Reindeer Goddess who carried the sun between her wide antlers bringing in the Winter Solstice, a folktale which draws loosely from several ancient stories from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, including many elements from indigenous Saami folklore. In the summer months when the sun shines brightly, the Sun is pulled by a giant bear. Then as the year progresses and winter approaches, her light wanes and the bear would transform into a herd of reindeer. Unlike the male reindeer who sheds his antlers in winter, it is the doe who retains her antlers during the cold winter months, so truth be told, Santa’s reindeer are actually female. . .revealing how some elements of this original folktale still live on in this beloved story many of us still tell today!
All these stories transport us back into deep time, an ancient magical world were the lines between human and more-than-human were more fluid, where human identity was forged around relationship with reindeer and living in fidelity to the movement and migration of reindeer rather than confined to national or political borderlines. History shows that the creation of national borderlines was a method of control and subjugation, separating humans from their intimate relationship with reindeer, erasing their sense of intertwined identity with the natural world. . .while also undermining people’s self-reliance and mutual human-to-human support, erasing their sense of a shared storied landscape. What do we invite back into our psyches, and how are we reconfiguring our relationship to the wild when we choose to listen, read about and retell these stories today?
I believe through their retelling we acknowledge our relationality, and that finding this sense of connectedness is a relational job. Francis Weller, psychotherapist, writer, and soul activist. and author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, talks about the widespread feelings of loss and disconnectedness that pervades our modern lifestyle and culture that is so fundamentally divorced from the needs of the soul. In a podcast interview with Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo, hosts and co-founders of the Sounds of Sand Podcast, Weller talks about the opposite of emptiness as embeddedness: embeddedness to the land, embeddedness in relationship to other people and the wild. He insists that restoring a sense of soul requires reconnecting to “all my relations” which, he reminds us, is a very indigenous phrase and world view. He says, “You can’t think of the repairing of modernity in isolation, it’s not ‘how will I do this?’ but ‘how will we remember together?’”. I love this assertion because when we invite these folktales back into our lives, we open up to reconnecting with what we have been disconnected from, and in so doing we discover commonalities we may have not noticed before, we collectively remember our shared belonging to the landscape.
Ancient folktales reorient the way we see ourselves in relationship to other people, because they may be from a geographical location that transcends our modern national categories, encouraging us to rethink people, place and belonging. Folktales with shared similarities may come from ancient cultures that do not correspond with contemporary cultural categories which encourages us to rethink how we relate to our own sense of identity, how we relate to others, and our past. More often than not, ancient folktales uphold a worldview where humans and the wild are in a more interdependent, reciprocal, intimate relationship with each other, challenging modern ways of objectifying and commodifying the wild. In the mythical world of folktales, we are invited to enter back into relationship with nature. Wholistically speaking, through reindeer folktales we witness a synchronicities in our shared ancestral stories, a middling place. . .Perhaps we can call this “Middle Earth”, using the term of the beloved writer Tolkien in his books. . . where we recalibrate our minds to accommodate new constellations of relationships we may have overlooked before.
In my newest artwork I have sought to relate the significance of finding the shared synchronicities in these reindeer folktales with this year’s solar eclipse that passed over New England within a few hours of where I live. Eclipses draw our attention to circularity and intersecting cycles, the merging of two celestial bodies that are normally seen as opposite or separate (the moon and sun are often gendered, or at the very least seen as opposite in many myths and legends) . . .Folktales about reindeer/caribou similarly, do the job of intersecting, connecting things that are normally seen as separate or different. Weaving together landscapes we now think of as separate countries and cultures, these folktales offer us an “eclipse”: through their telling we witness this mystical merging of many into one.
Through these timeless reindeer folktales, we see these creatures featured prominently as divine mystical beings, caretakers, mothers, fathers, companions, family members as well as celestial beings poetically ushering in the seasonal cycles. We discover shared similarities emerging, transcending linguistic and cultural barriers, uniting communities of people who migrated with the reindeer as they circled the northern latitudes. These narratives not only portray the deep connection between humans and reindeer but also highlight the shared human reverence for nature's wisdom and the importance of living in harmony with the wild. Most importantly, these folktales reflect our deep human need to feel welcomed and embraced by the herd, and the vital human need to feel that we intimately belong to the landscape.
Note* Though there are two different words for reindeer (“caribou” are undomesticated and “reindeer” are domesticated versions of the same creature) I have used the word “reindeer” consistently in this piece to refer to both.
Blog Post Cover Image credit: Juan Encalada on Unsplash
References:
Kent, Neil (2019). The Sami Peoples of the North: A Social and Cultural History.
Laestadius, Lars Levi. (2002). Fragments of Lappish Mythology. Aspasia Books.
Merkur, Daniel (1991). Powers Which We Do Not Know: The Gods and Spirits of the Inuit. University of Idaho Press. (https://archive.org/details/powerswhichwedon0000merk)
Mishan, Ligaya (Nov 9., 2020). “In the Arctic, Reindeer Are Sustenance and a Sacred Presence” (https://www/nytimes.com/2020/11/09/t-magazine/reindeer-arctic-food.html)
Pentikäinen, Juha. (1997). The Mythology of the Sami. Reinhold Schletzer.
©2021 Protect The Arctic.
Shaw, Judith (December 18, 2016) “The Reindeer Goddess by Judith Shaw” (https://www.feminismandreligion.com/2016/12/18/-the-reindeer-goddess-by-judith-shaw/)
Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo (Hosts) (December 14, 2023). Francis Weller [audio podcast interview[]. “Emptiness & Grief with Francis Weller”. In Sounds of Sand Podcast. (https://we.scienceandnonduality.com/podcasts/sounds-of-sand/episodes/2148370296)
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