Driving in a winter wonderland.
As we inch closer and closer to the winter months, we all must prepare for driving in wintry conditions. That is unless you are reading this from a place like Florida, where the cold weather months won’t really affect your commute. I’d imagine that must be nice… though you don’t get to experience what the rest of the country calls “the four seasons,” which isn’t a great trade off in my opinion.
If you live up in a place like Norway, the bitter winter can last for months on end. For portions of the country (mainly the northern part), harsh wintry weather can last from October all the way through April without much of a break. There’s even a period of the winter that northern Norway experiences called “Polar Night,” where the sun doesn’t come out for weeks.
The Aurora Borealis Observatory is located in Silsand, Norway, which sits in the northern region of the country. They posted this video on Facebook recently showing a herd of reindeer scattered across an icy roadway. The driver of the vehicle was basically having to play an icy game of “Frogger” with the reindeer to avoid slipping and sliding into one of the animals.
Norway is home to quite the large reindeer population. Interestingly enough, the country boasts a population of over 250,000 reindeer. The catch? Only about 25,000 of those live out in the wild. The rest are domesticated reindeer, and about 185,000 are located in the county of Finnmark alone.
It appears that the reindeer in this video below are wild (though there’s an outside chance they are some form of domesticated). And more specifically, they’re in the middle of the road. Looks to me like there’s plenty of space for the reindeer to go in the winter wonderland captured in this footage, but for some reason, they were spread out on this roadway.
It’s not uncommon for animals to use roads to travel, especially when snow is piled up elsewhere. Animals out in nature are also familiar with the “work smarter, not harder” mantra, and they’ll just as easily take the road more traveled (and plowed clear) as they would bother to clear their own paths in the snow.
These reindeer in Norway were probably doing just that. The snowfall does look pretty deep (one reindeer steps into the snow and it looks like it’s almost up to its belly), so I don’t blame the antlered animals for utilizing the road. It just made for a more challenging drive for the person behind the wheel.
I’d imagine that they didn’t mind slowing down all that much. After all, it’s truly a serene view, and if the reindeer helped them to slow down and take it all in – while also making sure not to hit any of the animals with their vehicle – I’d say that’s a win-win for everybody.
It’s a truly beautiful video… and looks like a scene that Santa would see as he’s pulling up to his house in the North Pole:
