Being able to visit the Nuuksio Reindeer park was fortuitous as they are only open for a few hours on Sundays. Reindeer are very much a part of Finnish culture. Some herds roam free. Some reindeer are used for meat. This herd is protected at this reserve. I think that they are beautiful creatures.
I didn't know exactly what to expect when we visited but they gave us a bucket full of lichen so we could feed them. Yay! Lichen is one of the main staples in the reindeer diet and it grows incredibly slowly. It is found it in the wild but it is illegal to harvest it. The lichen we used is shipped in specifically for these reindeer. It comes in blocks that we just broke apart to feed them. They don't have top teeth so you don't have to worry about them nibbling fingers. I wish there had been a way for me to capture the magic and joy in my kids' faces as they fed the reindeer. It was special.
Daxton and Kelton could not get enough of it and once our bucket was empty they scrounged for leftover chunks that had fallen on the ground. Once we were out of lichen we went to the campfire to bake some rolls. It wasn't a fussy affair (I learned that most things in Finland are not fussy). We were given sharpened sticks and some dough. We wrapped the dough around the stick in whatever way would hold steady and baked it over a fire. We then grabbed cups of strawberry jam to dip the rolls into. It was our first taste of Finnish bread. They love cardamon and used it to season almost every baked bread item we ate while we were there. I cannot wait to experiment with that at home. The kids were kind of on the fence about the flavor, but the adults really liked it.
The park wasn't big so we didn't spend more than an hour or so visiting, but I wish we could have lingered longer. It was just a pleasant place to be.
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