Reindeer or reindeer

Za "Time" from Kiruna

The herd is running around, the calves are calling for their mothers. A thousand reindeer is on a limited gathering place high above Rensjen. It is a small settlement in the polar circle, in the far north Sweden. The patter of the herd cuts through the cold air, a beat that helps reindeer orient themselves when it's snowy or foggy.

Reindeer were collected from free grazing because it is necessary to brand the calves and determine which males are going to slaughter.

The whole family is here. Sami - that's how the old people of the north of Scandinavia call themselves, while others call them "To the Lapps". Adults chase animals, children practice lassoing. There are small fires by the fence - reindeer are skinned there. Meat, skin, even blood is used.

Karin Quarfort Nia (48) has a soft freckled face and a serious look. Her family has been living like this for centuries, just like other Sami people. As she grabs a calf whose ear is not yet tagged, Nia says they live by the reindeer calendar. "Where we are and what we do - that is not decided by us, but by the animals."

Reindeer have their own business. Since spring, they graze on the highlands above the mining town of Kiruna. In winter, they go to the birch and conifer forests southeast of the city to find enough food. Every year, the herd crosses hundreds of kilometers through the tundra to find enough lichens and mosses - a reindeer needs eight kilograms of food a day.

"Animals know where they have to go," says Nia. But maybe this fall was the last time they could follow the inner compass. Because now the well-trodden route between the summer and winter bivouac, that last corridor, is under threat.

photo: n. bertrams

WEALTH UNDER THE TUNDRA

This land has been mined for 135 years. In Kiruna is the largest underground iron mine in the world - four kilometers wide, at a depth of 1.365 meters. More than twenty million tons of ore are extracted every year. "There are already five mines on our land. They are expanding every year, and we are left with less and less land for our reindeer and the survival of our culture," says Nia.

The new planned mine, right next to the one with iron, hides a special wealth - not for the Sami, they are not interested in it, but for the industry. For, as they say, the future and raw material independence of Europe. Namely, the state concern LKAB found rare earth metals under Kiruna, which is a collective name for seventeen precious elements.

There, under the reindeer's feet, supposedly lie 1,2 billion tons of these metals, which is enough to cover almost a fifth of Europe's needs. Rare metals are incorporated into electric cars, windmills, military technology.

Kiruna is a small town that contradicts itself, like all mining towns. If there was no iron, there would be no Kiruna, but maybe the mines here will come to everyone's heads. Above the town is a black hill, waste from the mine. Because of the underground pit, the ground shakes, the facades crack, the streets become porous.

The town has been moving east for ten years. Three kilometers away, a new city center is emerging, with a hotel, bank, and supermarkets. In the old center, workers are removing residential areas, carefully removing windows, sinks, and insulation. Excavators are demolishing late into the night.

The dark red wooden church, more than a century old, was moved in August with much fanfare and cameras. Its 672 tons were lifted and carefully driven for two days through Kiruna to a new location near the cemetery. It turned out to be a national festival, even King Carl XVI Gustaf appeared.

Sobering came a few days after that spectacle. It was announced that another six thousand people had to be relocated. Many here feel that LKAB and the state itself are leaving them in the lurch because they kept quiet about the extent of the resettlement. They learned the hard way what the Sami people have known for a long time - what it's like to have your home taken away.

photo: n. bertrams

NOT A CROWN FOR KIRUNA

The new city center is cold and starchy. No greenery. In the middle of the roundabout, as a monument, a giant shovel. Around the concrete snow house, local birds from the grouse family. In the language of the Lapland people, the snow house is called "giron", that's how the Sami call the city of Kiruna.

Mayor Mats Taveniku, a social democrat, works in the new town hall, in the hall of which there is a showcase with carved figures, the work of the Sami people. That's all of their folklore here. Taveniku has a ready catalog of justifications for the expansion of the mine for journalists - raw materials are needed for "green transformation". He says that without such rare metals there is no clean traffic and electricity without fossil fuels.

But he can also criticize. "In the previous fourteen years, LKAB paid the state almost two hundred billion crowns (more than 18 billion euros), but not a single crown of that huge sum remained in Kiruna," says Taveniku.

In Sweden, there is no tax on mining and no obligation to pay anything to the local community. It is attractive for the mining giants, but disastrous for the locals. When the basins are exhausted, wasteland will remain and with it an empty city coffers. There is already a shortage of caregivers for 23.000 residents, the hospital is shrinking. "We are like a colony," says Taveniku.

Here, in the north of Europe, the expanses are hard to fathom. This municipality, for example, occupies an area equal to the whole of Slovenia. But most of it was captured by the state. Areas of protected nature, military zones, testing grounds for NATO, tourist attractions - everything narrows the pastures for reindeer.

"There are many interests in this country. Our job is to treat everyone fairly," says Taveniku about the pressure he is under. "We here love mining companies and hate them at the same time."

As much as four-fifths of the iron ore mined in the EU comes from the north of Sweden, goes to smelters across the continent, and thus steel for tanks and large windmill propellers is created. The mine employs the town, and the ore gives Sweden power - whoever controls the raw materials controls the future. Dozens of new mines are being planned in Nemilice, especially in Lapland - iron, graphite, copper, nickel, gold. In the last year and a half, 335 permits for the exploration of mineral resources were granted.

photo: n. bertrams

"THEY WANT MONEY, PARE, PARE"

Entire worlds are, therefore, between the games played in Kiruna's town hall and the pasture where the reindeer are now. Then again, it's only half an hour's drive between them. Karin Nia stalks calves with a red rope. When he catches them, a symbol is carved on their ear with a sharp knife - the arm of a star, a crescent moon or something else. Every family that has been living off reindeer for generations has its own sign.

In Stockholm, few people are interested in that. Sweden's prosperity came largely on the backs of the natives, their northern lands providing the wealth of the south. In the 17th century, a Swedish chancellor called the north "our India" - a colony from where silver and wood, and later iron, arrived.

Now it's a matter of rare metals. In May 2024, the law on critical raw materials came into force in the EU as a response to China. By 2030, the EU should have ten percent of "domestic" rare earths, process 40 percent of its needs and recycle 25 percent.

Since then, the new mine in Kiruna is considered "strategic". Deadlines have been shortened, inspections have been accelerated, environmental activists are protesting in vain. Geopolitical considerations are above the right of people to live on their own.

Mati Blind Berg, president of the Swedish Reindeer Breeders' Association, knows about the tension between Brussels and the north of Sweden. Last December, he was in Brussels when there was talk of raw materials. He says, important people talked about supply, the green agenda, competition and - military strength.

"Suddenly it's not just climate protection anymore. Now there's war," says Berg, shaking his head. "When steel is needed for tanks, then we are up here in a 'strategic area'. The West sees land as a resource. We as the basis of life. We Sami need a place, time, silence - they want money, money, money," says this man.

LONG HISTORY OF PRINTING

The Sami, the only indigenous people of Europe, have lived in the Arctic for ten millennia. In Scandinavia and on the Russian Kola Peninsula, there are barely a hundred thousand of them left today.

Since the end of the 19th century, Sweden has regulated that reindeer can only be kept by Samebi - literally "Sami village" - a kind of cooperative and community in one. They have to use certain pastures, which destroyed the nomadic way of life. Today, there are about fifty such cooperatives where 4.600 reindeer herders live and work. Most Sami have abandoned their traditional way of life or have been driven out of it.

They themselves were derogatorily called "Laps" and systematically oppressed. Until the fifties of the last century, children were separated from their parents, taken to state and church boarding schools, and grew up without their mother tongue. The state has not officially apologized to this day, and it was only in 2020 that it launched a commission to investigate everything. In 2021, the Church asked for forgiveness.

Although the Sami have the right to graze reindeer in northern Sweden, there is a long series of court decisions that have put mines and concessions ahead of reindeer. The cooperative in which Matti Berg, south of Kiruna, won a spectacular victory in court five years ago after a decade and a half of dispute - the exclusive right to regulate hunting and fishing in the area. Soon after, they found the mutilated carcasses of their reindeer, and the perpetrators were never caught.

Berg knows what that means - the fight is not over and probably never will be.

MINES, TOURISTS AND WOLVES

Lars-Markus Kuhmunen (46), head of a cooperative village in the hills, drives a six-wheeler, an SUV suitable for snow. For three days, he and his friends were on the slopes, to drive the reindeer into the corral. They did not find all the animals, there is too much fog and rain.

Today, while the reporters are here, it is a sunny September day. Too warm for this time of year. But even when the weather is nice, it is not easy to gather the reindeer. Animals lose their orientation between mines, roads and power lines. Some appear in the middle of Kiruna, lost. The new mine, says Kuhmunen, is "a dark cloud over us". If they open it, their country will be cut in two. "This will make traditional reindeer husbandry impossible. It would be the end of our community."

He says that the Sami must challenge every mine before the court, to fight again for their rights. And big capital and industry? They, he says, work thoroughly and slowly - here they expand a little, there they get a permit, until the last corridor is blocked. Sweden has never ratified Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, which promises indigenous peoples the disposal of their land.

They themselves once placed their hopes in the European Union. "But with the regulations on strategic raw materials, Brussels clearly showed us that our rights should be sacrificed," says Kuhmunen. "We are on a downward spiral. If we don't fight now, we will lose our children's future." He does not agree to financial compensation for the country. Because, he says, if there is no country, there is no culture.

Tourists should also be included in the whole crowd in this country. They flock to the Arctic Circle to see the greenish aurora dancing in the sky, to drive snowmobiles or to ski on untrodden snow at high altitudes - where they are brought by helicopters. And that's where female reindeer give birth to cubs.

"Too many threats at once," says Matti Berg, the head of the breeders' association. Reindeer are trampled by trains and cars, more and more predators have come to the area. "Everything on our shoulders at once, mining, deforestation, tourism, wolves. But there's just enough work to complain about - then they call us the brakes on development."

TUNDRAS NEED REINDEERS

Reindeer need space - and the tundra needs reindeer. By feeding them, they prevent the bushes from spreading too much, fertilize the bare soil, and ensure the diversity of plants and insects. When there are many animals, they trample the snow, the ground cools down better under it and stays frozen longer. And vice versa, the fewer animals there are, the faster the permafrost melts.

The Arctic is suffering from climate change more than other parts of the planet. Mild winters, rain over snow, hard ice. Reindeer have a harder time finding food, young ones don't make it through the winter. Recently, the University of Adelaide in Australia calculated that two-thirds of reindeer have disappeared in recent decades.

Mines, on the other hand, leave permanent damage. An old copper and zinc mine in this area covered the nearby pastures with its dust. Reindeer now avoid them. Especially females with young try to keep at least twelve kilometers away from streets, windmills or mines.

"We Sami are still being oppressed," says Karin Nia. It has consequences. Studies say that one in three young Sami shepherds have already considered or attempted suicide - twice the Swedish average. "This is a big burden. It affects me, my family, the whole environment. It is about our future."

And he wonders what kind of European "green reform" this is, if the last country of a nation has to fall for it.

The research was supported by Journalismfund Europe