This video was shot in May 2021, on one of our bespoke adventure tours to join the Nenets on their epic migrations. It shows the Nenets migrating near the shore of Sosyang-To lake, about 300 km north of Salekhard, the capital of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Region.
The Nenets reindeer herders of Arctic Siberia's Yamal Peninsula are the most nomadic people on the planet. Two to five times a week, they pack all their belongings, homes and family onto wooden, hand-carved reindeer sledges and migrate to new pastures.
May can be quite a tough time for the Nenets, but a very interesting time to visit them. May is the birthing season for calves. All the Nenets' effort is directed towards helping the calves survive. They do this in two main ways:
* They separate the male reindeer from the females, and keep them in two separate herds up to 30km apart from one another
* The men start spending almost 24 hours a day with the reindeer herd, sleeping on the snow in temperatures that can still drop to -35°C if unlucky. They of course take their warmest clothing with them: kisy reindeer fur boats, malitsa reindeer fur coat and gus reindeer fur coat, which is worn on top of the malitsa in extreme cold or when sleeping outside.
When a female reindeer is giving birth, the men help it find a patch of snow-free ground, which gives the calf a better chance of survival. They help with the birth itself and try to get the calf up on its legs and running as soon as possible, to minimise the chances of it freezing.
In cold years, when the snow has not started melting by May, females cannot find snow-free ground to give birth on. Huge numbers of calves do not survive. We witnessed this in May 2017, when we organised a 2-week film shoot for a crew from the BBC.
For more videos from all over Arctic Russia, you can visit our YouTube channel: Arctic Russia Travel .
