Rudolph's Highland Home

Reindeer roam wild in just one place in the UK – the snow-covered Cairngorm mountains. Cameron McNeish marvels at an extraordinary animal that thrives in freezing Arctic environments

T was the night before Christmas of 1976. My wife and I were camped on a sheltered hillside close to the rocky pass called Chalamain Gap in the northern Cairngorms. Snow lay all around, there was a full moon and the evening sky was ablaze with stars. Our turkey dinner was cooking on a lightweight paraffin stove.

As we pulled a festive cracker some curious sounds outside the tent took our attention: low whistles, muffled calls, strange grunting and clicking. And was that an Alpine cow bell?

Gina unzipped the tent and peeked outside. “Wow,” she uttered, “have a look at this, you’ll never believe it…”

A dozen or so reindeer were padding past our tent, off-white and shaggy and hugely antlered, their broad feet barely making an impression on the snow surface. Walking along behind them, herding them with his medley of whistles, was a bearded, elderly man in what appeared to be the colourful national dress of Lapland.

It was an extraordinary scene, right out of a Christmas card. For a moment I expected the reindeer to take flight, pulling the Santa Claus figure in tow.

It was some time later that I learned the reindeer herder was none other than Mikel Utsi, a Sami Laplander who, along with his American wife Dr Ethel Lindgren, had reintroduced reindeer to Scotland some 24 years earlier.

The Vikings are thought to have hunted reindeer in Scotland during the years of their colonisation, as did, according to the sagas, the Earl of Orkney. Carbon dating of the remains of Scottish reindeer found in ancient food middens suggest that reindeer lived in the Highlands until around 800 years ago when they became extinct, due to a combination of climate change and hunting pressures.

RETURN OF THE REINDEER