Florian Stammler and Erik Kielsen

Much has been written already about the losses of reindeer due to icing-over, or rain on snow events, among reindeer herders in Siberia and elsewhere. The climate seasonality is changing and this comes with its challenges in the Arctic for humans and animals alike. For example, in our research site in Finnish Lapland in Sattasniemi, snow came as early as September and then early October, and a freezing and thawing cycle, which led the reindeer to migrate much earlier to the winter pastures than usual. As a result, many reindeer herders had to start feeding their animals a month earlier, as well as starting the round-up and slaugther campaign.

In our research site in South Greenland, this winter also had a catastrophic start due to extremely sudden and heavy snowfall in the main sheep herding district of the country, in Kujalleq commune.

There, we started working with Bruce Forbes on contemporary animal husbandry livelihoods with Inuit sheep and reindeer herders, who are incredibly innovative in their responses to the challenging weather. However, this winter the snow hit the area so hard that it buried numerous sheep of several sheep herders, who were just about to collect them back from the mountains for overwintering in their farms. When compared to reindeer, sheeps’ legs are shorter, so they cannot move as well in very deep snow. Moreover, the snow gets stuck in their wool and basically immobilises them.

In South Greenland sheep herding, the herds spend the summers on mountain pastures, and can stay there until the late fall. Like with reindeer in Finland – the longer they stay on the natural pastures, the less do they need to be fed by human-produced feed (hay, oat and industrially produced fodder). In a news piece about the extreme snowfall, they report that usually snow does not come so early to this part of Greenland, so sheep herders were caught by surprise. Unlike reindeer, or Yakutian horses, sheep will not usually feed on fodder from under the snow. They stay in barns over the winter, and people prepare hay for them.

Although most of the sheep survived, this event has led to such losses that it would be helpful if the authorities could compensate herders in order to keep their farms viable. This process has not been activated yet. Search and rescue operations for the stuck sheep have been large scale, with a local helicopter company helping out, as well as the national air company Air Greenland.

The challenges of deep snow or increased snow duration for sheep farming are of course not unheard of. Previous research has worked on this problem also in South Greenland, especially for the spring season. The question was important for understanding the decline of the Norse animal husbandry in South Greenland in the middle ages. This shows once again the need to a fine-grained understanding of the changes in the weather in particular sites. Not just general climate trends of warming or cooling. As the seasonality changes this study shows how too little precipitation in summer, i.e. drought just as well poses challenges for the animal husbandry, as too much snow at the wrong time in autumn/winter that we have been witnessing in 2023/2024.