WITBN

Round I: NRK Sápmi

The Eira family: 8 episodes

For a whole year an NRK camera team closely followed and filmed the daily life of the Eira family from Kautokeino, in the far north of Norway, and their large herd of reindeer. This eight-part series covers the animals’ annual migration to new feeding grounds, calving, marking and slaughtering. Also included are traditional Sápmi courtship rituals and marriage ceremonies.

These Sápmi herdsmen live in a world far removed from the hustle and bustle of modern civilization. In Sápmi society the word of the family elders is law, daily life is geared to the needs of the reindeer and the vagaries of the weather, and children are brought up to tackle the challenges posed by life on the bleak Finnmark plateau.

Principal characters
Junnan (67), Johan Mathis Eira, is head of the family and the leading personality of the series. Highly respected for his knowledge and experience of handling reindeer, he has done much to preserve the Sápmi’s long-established traditions of reindeer keeping.

He has eight children, three daughters and five sons; it is the sons who will carry on the family business. The oldest of them, Ole Mathis (40), is second in authority after his father. The youngest members of the family share the life and toil of their elders and so soon become hardened to nomadic life in these harsh surroundings.

In this documentary, viewers are afforded a unique insight into the practice of reindeer keeping and Sápmi culture. The Eira family are proud of their status as reindeer-keeping Sápmi. However, although they pay due heed to the Sápmi’s hard-earned knowledge of how to survive in this arctic environment, in other respects they enjoy a thoroughly modern lifestyle.

Their clothing and mechanical and technical aids are all state-of-the-art, perfectly adapted to life on this barren, windswept plateau. Traditional Sápmi costume is worn only on festive occasions.

The first such ceremony in the series is a genuine Sápmi courtship ritual. It features in the second episode, when Junnan’s oldest daughter, Ann-Britt, receives a visit from her suitor.

The reindeer-keeping year is divided into eight distinct seasons, each devoted to some specific activity, an activity linked, in turn, to the focus of their lives: the reindeer.

The productions company are NRK. Every episode is 40 minutes. The productions year is 2007. “The Eira family” is made on DigiBeta 16:9. NRK have all rights to the “The Eira family” serie.

Roger Østby, project manager, NRK Sápmi.