Herds of the tundra

In Herds of the Tundra, Robert Paine portrays Saami reindeer pastoralists in the 1960s and analyzes the effects of recent Norwegian gevernment legislation on the Saami's traditional nomadic lifestyle. Each year, Saami herders and their reindeer cover up to 500 kilometers, moving from inland winter grazing grounds to summer pastures and back again in the autumn. Drawing from the journals he kept while following the 1961-1962 migration in northern Norway, Paine gives detailed accounts of reindeer pastoralist herding and husbandry at each season, including an analysis of herd compositions and herd economies. Since Paine's fieldwork thirty years ago, Saami pastoralists have modernized and have had to change to accommodate the social democratic principles of the Norwegian government. Beginning with the Reindeer Management Act of 1978, Paine critiques government attempts to rationalize and regulate Saami pastoralism. As painful and controversial as some of the measures have been for the pastoralists, other measures have had unforeseen and unwanted consequences for the government itself. The state offered, among other things, calf slaughter subsidies to encourage a herder to slaughter a greater percentage of each herd. Instead of increasing the number of people living off smaller herds, these subsidies enable herders to slaughter fewer animals to support their families, so most herders choose to increase their herds, which they traditionally pass on to their children. Controversial rifts continue between governmental experts who decide how reindeer pastoralism should be practiced, ecologists concerned with the environmental consequences of pastoralism, and the Saami herders. With its careful attention to the seasons of a reindeer herd, relations between herder and herd, and to the pastoralist-state relationship - all through crucial decades of change - Herds of the Tundra is an important contribution to comparative studies of pastoral societies and animal ethology.