Mariusz Wilk

Following the Reindeer

Excerpt

In recent times Polish literature has been very lucky with nomadic writers who go to far-flung corners of the world that are rarely visited by tourists and give accounts of these journeys in travel writing. Without doubt one of the most interesting is Mariusz Wilk, who is particularly partial to the northern extremes of Russia. His latest book, Following the Reindeer, is the second volume of his “Northern Diary” and is mainly about his travels to the Kola Peninsula. This time the main object of his journey is the nomadic Saami people who live amid a harsh but beautiful environment north of the Arctic Circle. For centuries the Saami have been fishermen and reindeer herders, though in the latter case it is not entirely clear, because one of the locals tells the author straightforwardly: “It is not man that has tamed the wild reindeer, but the reindeer that have tamed people”. In general, the “aborigines of the North”, as Wilk calls them, are a closed people, reluctant to admit strangers to their secrets or magic rituals. In this book Wilk presents the history of this race, their tough battle to survive in the Soviet era, their customs, lifestyle, beliefs and legends (his free adaptation of the Saami legends in the chapter entitled “The Tale of the Crimson Trail” is extremely interesting). And of course he never fails to extol the beauty of the northern landscape. As he travels about the Kola Peninsula he also describes the realities of modern Russia, where the deep-rooted legacy of the communist past conflicts with the capitalist present. This problem also affects the Saami, for whom survival can only be guaranteed by the development of tourism in the territories where they live, except that it threatens them with irreversible destruction. Wilk interlaces his texts about the Saami with short portraits of writers and poets such as Sándor Márai, Li Bo and Bruce Chatwin. This is a travel writer’s homage to travel writers.

- Robert Ostaszewski

Mariusz Wilk (born 1955) is a prose writer, journalist and traveller. In the late 1980s he abandoned European civilisation to settle in the far north of Russia.