Dog Sledding

In wintertime, Sámi traditionally used reindeer or skies to move around. Dogsleds have never been traditionally used as form of transportaion in Finland. Dog sledding is a tradition borrowed from another culture and transplanted by the tourism industry to Lapland’s tourism scene in the 1980s. Sámi reindeer herding has continually been forced to compromise on their natural habitats and resources while competing with other forms of land use. From the perspective of Sámi reindeer herding, dog sledding activity is considered a culturally invasive alien species, causing ecological, financial, health and social harm to a traditional livelihood that is an original part of northern nature.