Well, you can't really ‘ride’ them, like you would a horse. The Dukha people in Mongolia do, but it's their children who train them. We're too tall and too heavy.
But reindeer are helpful at travelling across terrains that a horse would struggle with, thanks to their wider hooves, with rims that help to stop skidding.
They're also good at pulling things They can manage about 140kg each for a couple of hours. However, it doesn't come naturally to them – they have to follow a track.
More recently, reindeer have been trained to pull sleds with humans in them. It takes four years for the reindeer to advance from kermikkä (learning to wait, and trust people) to kunteus, and take people a couple of times a week, according to…
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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2024