High atop the windswept Luossavaara Mountain in northern Sweden, Sami reindeer herder Lars-Marcus Kuhmunen stands with a heavy heart, gazing over the vast tundra that his people have called home for thousands of years. The landscape, once a seamless expanse for migrating reindeer, now bears the marks of modern industry—an expanding iron-ore mine and, looming on the horizon, plans for Europe’s largest rare earth mineral extraction at the Per Geijer deposit. For Kuhmunen and the Sami community, these developments threaten not just their livelihoods, but the very fabric of their culture.
On September 8, 2025, concerns among Sweden’s indigenous Sami reached a fever pitch as they voiced fears that mining the newly discovered rare earths deposit on their traditional grazing grounds could spell the end of their way of life. According to the Associated Press, the Per Geijer deposit, located near Kiruna some 200 kilometers above the Arctic Circle, is hailed by Swedish officials as a potential game-changer for Europe’s technology and green energy ambitions. But for the Sami, its promise is shadowed by a profound sense of loss.
“The reindeer is the fundamental base of the Sami culture in Sweden,” Kuhmunen told AP. “Everything is founded around the reindeers: The food, the language, the knowledge of mountains. Everything is founded around the reindeer herding. If that ceases to exist, the Sami culture will also cease to exist.”
Reindeer herding is more than a job for the Sami—it’s a centuries-old tradition that shapes their identity, sustains their families, and anchors their connection to the land. The Sami are descended from a once-nomadic people whose territory stretches across the far north of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia. In Sweden alone, estimates suggest there are at least 20,000 people with Sami heritage, though the true number remains uncertain due to restrictions on ethnicity-based census data.
Today, the Sami organize into villages, or sameby, which are regulated by the Swedish state. These entities determine how many semi-domesticated reindeer each village can own and the boundaries of their grazing lands. In the Gabna village, where Kuhmunen serves as a leader, about 2,500 to 3,000 reindeer are tended by 15 to 20 herders, supporting around 150 people. Their livelihoods—and their children’s futures—depend on the health of the herds and the freedom to migrate across traditional routes.
But that freedom is being squeezed from all sides. Even before the rare earth discovery, Gabna’s herders faced mounting challenges from the world’s largest underground iron-ore mine, Kiirunavaara. Its relentless expansion has already forced the reindeer onto longer, more arduous migration paths. Now, the proposed Per Geijer mine threatens to sever the last remaining routes, cutting off access to the nutrient-rich lichen pastures that sustain the animals through harsh Arctic winters.
“It’s getting more and more a problem to have a sort of sustainable reindeer husbandry and to be able to have the reindeers to survive the Arctic winter and into the next year,” Stefan Mikaelsson, a member of the Sami Parliament, explained to AP. The stakes couldn’t be higher: if the migration corridors are lost, so too are the traditions, knowledge, and language passed down through generations.
Yet, the economic and geopolitical pressures behind the mining push are immense. LKAB, Sweden’s state-owned mining giant, hopes to begin extracting rare earths at Per Geijer in the 2030s. The goal is to reduce Europe’s dependence on China for these critical minerals, which are essential for everything from smartphones and hard drives to electric vehicles and wind turbines. As the continent shifts away from fossil fuels, the demand for rare earths is only set to grow.
LKAB’s senior vice president of special products, Darren Wilson, acknowledged the complexity of the situation. “There are potential things that we can do and we can explore and we have to keep engaging,” he said, according to AP. “But I’m not underestimating the challenge of doing that.”
Kuhmunen, however, is skeptical that meaningful solutions will emerge. “It's really difficult to fight a mine. They have all the resources, they have all the means. They have the money. We don’t have that,” he said. “We only have our will to exist. To pass these grazing lands to our children.” The Gabna village intends to contest the mine in court, but the odds feel stacked against them.
As if industrial encroachment weren’t enough, climate change is compounding the crisis. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average, upending the delicate balance of reindeer husbandry. Winters in Swedish Lapland, once reliably snowy, are now marked by rain that freezes into thick layers of ice—trapping lichen, the reindeer’s staple food, beyond their reach. “So you’re kind of both taking away the migration route that they have used traditionally over hundreds and thousands of years,” explained Anna Skarin, a reindeer husbandry expert at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, “and you would also take away that forage resource that they should have used during that time.”
Summers bring their own challenges. Temperatures have soared to 30 degrees Celsius (86°F), leaving reindeer overheated and unable to graze enough to build the fat reserves they need for the long winter. Some have suggested trucking the animals between grazing lands if mining proceeds, but Skarin dismissed the idea as unworkable—reindeer eat while walking, and being ferried by truck would deny them vital nourishment.
The potential loss of migration routes and forage resources would not just disrupt the practicalities of herding; it would unravel the very traditions that define Sami life. “How can you tell your people that what we’re doing now, it will cease to exist in the near future?” Kuhmunen asked, his words echoing the uncertainty faced by his community.
For now, the Sami are caught between the global race for green technology and the relentless march of climate change. Their struggle is a stark reminder that the transition to a sustainable future must account for the rights, voices, and cultures of those who have stewarded these lands for millennia. As the world looks north for answers, the Sami’s hopes—and fears—hang in the balance.
