If you leave your experiment behind in the Scandinavian mountains, you will have to deal with the wildlife up there.

We learned that lesson the hard way. It turns out that the high north houses a high density of reindeer, a fact we immediately noticed in our plots: labels destroyed, large footprints everywhere, flowers eaten, even some dung piles… The reindeer seemed to be attracted to our research!

The first few days, we only saw their tracks, obvious as they were. It only took us some time to finally see one in real life.

We thought they might have been hiding from us far away in the mountains, on the highest and less-visited peaks, but in the end our first sighting was right next to the chairlift, on the most touristical location in the whole northern mountain range.

The next day, we saw some more disturbers, with impressive antlers and a fierce look.

They were too majestic to keep us angry for a long time, though, and even after munching on our labels, we still had to forgive them.

That is exactly why we are here in the end, was it not, for the real nature?

  All pictures of the Scandinavian research from this summer here!