Reindeer-herding cultures in northern Nordland, Norway: Methods for documenting traces of reindeer herders in the landscape and for dating reindeer-herding activities

This paper focuses on reindeer-herding culture in northern Scandinavia. Reindeer herding concerns the day to day work with the herd on seasonal pastures and on the spring and autumn migrations. The main purpose is to discuss the age of reindeer pastoralism in northern Scandinavia. The transition to a reindeer-herding culture in northern Scandinavia occurred as reindeer came into private ownership, by which means reindeer acquired a new status in society. At the same time a new settlement pattern was established, involving a shift away from watercourses and new landscape elements coming into use. These new areas were the high hills between the rivers. In following the reindeer, people established new settlements in the reindeer pastures. At the same time, new types of physical features were established in the same areas, such as milking places “(gieddi)” and bone deposits. In Hamarøy municipality there is a large number of documented physical cultural remains related to reindeer pastoralism. These are hearths, places where reindeer were milked, and bone deposits that have been dated from the end of the late Iron Age, through the medieval period and to recent times. It is argued that they can be linked to a transition from a hunter-gatherer society to pastoralism, a change that can be dated back to the transition between the Iron Age and the Middle Ages, with the initial phase apparently dating from the end of the late Iron Age. This is a pattern that coincides with similar surveys in other areas, such as on the Swedish side of the Norwegian border. It is argued therefore that the transition to reindeer pastoralism occurred at this time.