love where you go: The reindeer man

Utsi’s hut is hidden away in the Glenmore forest and in all the years I’ve lived up here and been coming here on holiday, I had never seen it until Christmas Day, when it was the destination of our morning walk.

Mikel Utsi was a Norwegian Sami deer herder who moved to Scotland in the 1950s. He successfully introduced reindeer to Glenmore, where he had settled, and when he had imported his third consignment of the beasts, in 1956, he built the hut using wood from the crates used to transport the deer. It took a while to reach the reindeer enclosure so Utsi needed a place to stay. Inside was a small bed and a table and stools handcrafted by Utsi himself.

Arriving in the clearing

The hut on Christmas Day

Me and Calum at the Utsi hut Christmas picnic

Mr Utsi has come a long way. Just before Christmas, alerted by my cousin Liz, we found his herd, descendents of the original reindeer, had made it onto the front page of the New York Times.

Cairngorm reindeer in the New York Times

I remember Mr Utsi. He lived with his wife in a rather unprepossessing bungalow in Glenmore. His house was at the start of the road leading up to Glenmore Lodge, where we lived. To a shy girl like me he seemed mysterious and a little intimidating. He didn’t talk much, nor did we really have much to do with him (possibly because he was off in his hut for much of the time). But once a year at Halloween, we had to brace ourselves and ring his doorbell. We’d be invited into the living room to recite our ditties. Mr and Mrs Utsi would sit with their arms folded, listening, before fetching us the oddest assortment of ‘goodies’. It was not the highlight of our guising trail.

Now I realise he was probably as warm and hospitable as any of our neighbours – just Scandinavian.

I was so taken with the trail to the hut on Christmas Day that I returned a week later with my cousin Christopher Langmuir and his family, all over from Seville, Spain. To our tuna mayo sandwiches they brought homemade tortilla. The weather was a little calmer than on Christmas Day so we began and ended the walk on the shores of Loch Morlich. I think they enjoyed it. At any rate, despite soggy footwear the kids joined in a lively snowball fight and we brought them home for warming soup. I'm just delighted to have discovered another hidden gem.