-30C°. Veodalen, Jotunheimen, Norway
Footsteps squeak along the frozen ground, piercing the wintery silence…
“This isn’t something you learn from a book. You can’t just look it up. It’s more based on experience. What’s right one day, might be wrong the next day.”
“This is friluftsliv. And a job that becomes a lifestyle as much as a job.
We don’t work from 8 to 4. We follow the nature. I enjoy that.”
Ola Vaagaasarøyrgardand the Slettom Family are managing a herd of reindeer in Jotunheimen, with pasture that stretches from Eidsbugarden down to Heidalsmuen. They have a winter-herd of around 2,300 animals, with calving happening in the spring—and a sustainable production of reindeer meat and utilize natural resources that would have been difficult to make use of in any other way.
This herd is one of four domestic reindeer herds in Norway that are not Sami. The others are Lom, Fram and Filefjell. Together with Lom, this heard has the heaviest calf weight in the country.
