Etched Caribou Reindeer Bone Knife Sami Inuit Art Carving Greenland Scandinavia

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Etched Caribou Reindeer Bone Knife Sami Inuit Art Carving Greenland Scandinavia:
$82.50

Etched Caribou ReindeerBone Knife with Hole
Inuit Art CarvingGreenland/ Scandinavia
A Portrait of the North
Here is an interesting scrimshaw carving. It is a cream coloured etched bone knife with a scrimshawed caribou/reindeer design on both sides. It is most likely from Greenland or Scandinavia, given that the (domesticated) reindeer on it are shown pulling a sled.
The knife is split caribou bone andhas a hole at the end, e.g. to hang it up.
Dimensions: 9.25” x 1\"
About the Subject
Reindeer have been domesticated and managed in herds in Norway and some other areas of Scandinavia by the Sami * people since the ninth century. The reindeer are usedfor transportation, clothing, food and milk. They were brought to Greenland in the early 1950s, but reindeer herding really only lasted there to the late 1970s.
Reindeer husbandry is practiced by 31 cultural groups across the northern Arctic. In Alaska, reindeer (caribou) husbandry first developed in 1894 when the US government purchased 1280 reindeer from the Chukchi in Russia. It was part of a government plan to provide a source of economic development and meat for the indigenous Inupiaq. With the help of the Sami* who taught traditional methods, the Alaska herds increased dramatically to 600,000 by 1932, but dropped significantly over the decades to about 10,000 managed reindeer today.
In Canada herding began in the 1920s when the Canadian government introduced the caribou to around the Mackenzie delta. Free roaming caribou, in contrast, have lived across different parts of the Canadian north for centuries.
In recent years throughout many parts of the north, reindeer husbandry has been under a number of pressures and challenges including economic facotors (lack of access to markets), climate change, predation, poaching and loss of good reindeer pasture areas.* Samis are known in English as Lapps or Laplanders.
Source: reindeerherding (dot) org