Meeting Rudolf

We drive away from Irani there isn’t a lot of traffic on the road – but we do see several reindeers as we drive along. We have been seeing reindeers so often during our trip through Norway so we don’t consider them a very special sight anymore. And we have a long drive so we better just leave the reindeers alone – well unless they do block the road in front of us.

Suddenly a couple of reindeers are actually walking across the road in front of us and there is a gas station right at this spot as well. So we decide to stop here for a while to take the daily reindeer photo.

In front of the gas station there is a traditional Sami hut and a food storage on the usual pole to keep the animals away. This isn’t a museum so I guess the traditional buildings might actually be in use by the local Sami population.

We look at the reindeers – at first there are only a couple of reindeers crossing the road and a big one resting in the shade of a tree. We stay looking at the reindeers for a little bit – and much to our surprise more reindeers start arriving. First another couple comes from across the road. Then more reindeers comes from the other side and suddenly more are coming from a little side road.

It looks like this is the afternoon meeting place for reindeers in this area where they come to discuss the issues of the day while they can relax in the shade of the trees along the road.

We are standing close to the big reindeer which were resting under the tree and several of the reindeers come close to us. After a while we are surrounded by reindeers and they don’t mind us close by as long as we are not touching them – too much. It seems like they don’t mind if we touch their antlers a bit. The antlers are very soft since they still have the protective skin they had when they grow them during the spring and early summer. It isn’t until the autumn they will get rid of this protective skin when the males get ready to fight for the females.

We were only supposed to stay for a couple of minutes with the reindeers but it is fun to have them come close like this so we end up spending a bit of time enjoying the local farm animals.