While we can’t confirm what our friends Rudolph, Blitzen and the rest of the team get up to in the offseason when they aren’t helping Santa deliver presents around the world (its all very hush hush) there are humors they sometimes attend Sami Week in Norway to compete in the annual Norwegian Reindeer Racing Championships, which draws thousands of spectators to the city center of Tromsø to watch the country’s fastest reindeer compete for the national title.
The races are conducted on Tromsø’s main street which is closed off and covered with snow for the event. The skiers and reindeer compete in head to head heats over a sprint distance measuring just over 650 feet until one team is declared the champion. Speeds often exceed 30mph and its considered a win just cross the finish line. The world record time is 14.936 seconds set by Anders Nils Eira back in 2005.
Interestingly Laplanders have been harnessing reindeer and skiing behind them for hundreds of years as an effective way to traverse the vast snowy expanses of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. It even has an official name in Norwegian, snörekjöring. Merry Christmas!
