Northern exposure | 8 December 2016

In this season of watching and waiting as we approach Christmas and year’s end, radio has a precious role. At the switch of a button you can be taken straightaway into another kind of life, a different world, where present realities are not relevant or can at least be made to feel less imperative. While the screen can transport you to places you’ve never been, its visual escapism never quite overwhelms the imagination in the way that words, sound effects, music will do if subtly shaped into audio magic. Who needs images when in an instant you can be taken in your imagination to the wilds of northern Finland, crunching through the snow, wind whistling in the background, breath sharp on the lungs in the
freezing air?

In Burn Slush! on the World Service (catch it on iPlayer under The Documentary series), Cathy FitzGerald takes us on a sleigh ride through the night-time forest, beneath a sky studded with stars, the Northern Lights flickering in the distance. We hear the silence of that deep darkness and need no pictures to conjure up the Great Bear, the snowy vastness, the sense of being at the top of the world, beyond the Arctic Circle. ‘I think everyone should spend a short time with these reindeer here in this big winter silence,’ says the reindeer herder who is her guide. ‘To have this in your soul. To have this as the base of who you are…. It’s a really strong foundation.’

Each spring the herders gather for reindeer races, pulled along on cross-country skis. It takes years of experience, generations of working with the reindeer, living alongside them, to persuade them to race along the track and not wander off — they’re not biddable like horses. You have to negotiate with them.

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At the championships held on a frozen lake near the village of Inari in Finland, a crowd gathers to watch, drinking vodka, hot blueberry juice, snacking on cinnamon buns and reindeer meat (‘It’s delicious,’ we’re told.