In Search of Sami  ~ An Adventure in Lapland
By Ann Lombardi














I admit I was an odd kid.  While other girls at St. Thomas More Elementary
School prayed for their very own snorting, galloping “National Velvet” for Christmas,
I fantasized about owning a pet reindeer.  Of course, part of my aloofness towards
horses stemmed from my tumble off a pony head first into a pile of pony poop during
Ellen Vogt’s birthday party in third grade.  But my passion for reindeer had another
source:   my fourth grade world geography class.    

It started the day Sister Grace Maria unfolded a faded map and announced that
we’d be learning about a region in northern Europe beyond the Arctic Circle of
Norway, Sweden and Finland.  She described an isolated, snowy place populated by
the “Sami” reindeer herders of the Arctic north.  “These peaceful reindeer people
belong to one of the oldest cultures in the world,” the Sister intoned, beginning a slide
show that depicted men wearing red and blue woolen outfits and standing in reindeer
fur boots on the frozen tundra.  “Since 1500 A.D., the Sami have worked as reindeer-
herding nomads.  They use these trusty animals to pull their loaded sleds.  They drink
reindeer milk, eat reindeer meat and make tents and clothing from reindeer skins.  
The Sami even use reindeer tendons for sewing, and they carve reindeer antler for
tools.  The warm reindeer fur is ideal for Sami winter boots.”  

I was only half listening.  Instead, I was already scheming to get my very own pet
reindeer.  My father took the pragmatic approach.  He gently tried to convince me our
backyard in Atlanta, Georgia couldn’t produce enough lichen and moss to meet the
basic food needs of a reindeer.  Dad also pointed out that our scorching summer
weather might not be a reindeer’s climate of choice.  Unconvinced, I resorted to several
evenings of unproductive sulking in my room after supper.  

One Friday night, Dad called me into the living room for a surprise.  I remained
unimpressed after I opened his package and found inside a brown, hard stub.  “It’s a
real carved reindeer antler,” he said.  His tone of voice was calm, but I could tell from
his smiling eyes that this was something special.  “It came all the way from Finnish
Lapland.  Your great aunt brought it back from a tour she took to Europe long ago.”  

Although a live reindeer to go with the antler never materialized, it solidified my
unlikely passion, and as the years marched on, I still held fast to the dream of seeing the
creatures in the flesh.  Perhaps this explains why forty years later, two weeks before
Christmas, I was headed to Finnish Lapland.  In the decades since my father had
indulged me with the Sami-carved reindeer antler, I had become a travel agent (after
failing to marry into money to fund my wanderlust) and a world traveler.  I had
frolicked with ballistic dolphins in the Caribbean, toured back streets of Moscow with
a black marketer, come in dead last in the Berlin Marathon and flirted with North
Korean soldiers on the DMZ.  I had fought for my life in the Acapulco undertow,
fended off amorous Italians on overnight trains, shared sleeping quarters with a
grunting boar in the Alps and been tear-gassed in curlers outside a Seoul beauty
salon.  I had romped in volcanic hot springs with a naked Icelandic guy, crashed
overnight on an Amsterdam jail floor, been rescued from quicksand by a French
tractor and munched on roasted guinea pigs in Ecuador.  But there was still a void in
my globe-trotting life:  I had yet to take a dream vacation to Finland’s reindeer country.

As I bubble-wrapped the treasured antler and tucked it away in my carry-on
bag, my brother Pat implored, “Come join us at the beach like last year, Ann.  Normal
folks don’t head for Lapland in the dead of winter.”  “Beware of hypothermia,” my
well-meaning neighbor chimed in.  What did they know?  Leaving friends and family
behind, I sped off to the airport.  After sprinting down the crowded concourse to the
waiting aircraft, I reached the departure gate and high-fived the dapper, European  
executive behind me.  Before you could say “Santa Claus,” I was winging my way
across the ocean to a winter fantasy land at the edge of the Arctic Circle:  Lapland!

With visions of furry reindeer, brightly-clad Sami and salmon-pink winter skies,
I drifted off to sleep for most of the ten-hour trip, jolting awake when the plane landed
with an icy thud in Helsinki.  I fished around for my mittens, grabbed my backpack
and scooted to my connecting flight to Rovaniemi, the capital of Finnish Lapland.  

Feeling nothing short of triumphant, I arrived at my hotel, a mere stone’s throw
from the Arctic Circle, where reindeer reign supreme!  Then I sauntered up to the hotel
reception desk.  A pink-cheeked clerk named Henna greeted me with a curtsey.
I inquired breathlessly whether she were Sami.  Henna shook her head and
explained she wasn’t, but my disappointment was tempered when she offered to take off
the whole day to introduce me to the “real Lapland.”  It turned out that at the bigger hotels
in town, organized snowmobile trips carted tourists to reindeer camps, where most of the
people wearing Sami clothes were actually just regular Finns dressed in costumes.

Continued next page.
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Photograph by Matti Tirri