This chapter highlights some of the relationships between animals and humansin the European Arctic during World War II, with special attention on reindeeras a unique and key species in the region. The main part of the chapter focuseson the value and meaning humans attached to the reindeer during the waryears. The Sweden-based Sámi newspaper Samefolkets Egen Tidning offers par-ticular insights into the reasoning and motivation for ascribing the reindeermultiple roles and functions. However, since reindeer never lived shielded orisolated from other species – human and non-human animals alike – the latterpart of the chapter will explore some of the manifold multispecies relations innorthernmost Europe between 1940 and 1945. What role did reindeer play inthe web of relations in the wartime Arctic?

This paper explores the imagined reindeer of the twentieth century. It examines the relationship between humans and the Arctic animal in a historical perspective and highlights five ways of imagining the reindeer. Over time, it was assigned the role of an exclusively Sámi animal and an unruly trespasser, but also turned into a modernization project before it became a vulnerable victim of toxicity, only to be reinvented as a harbinger of Sámi food sovereignty. Drawing from animal studies and using a range of archival material, I argue that each way of imagining the reindeer was followed by extensive policy and legal efforts in order to make the reindeer compliant and predictable. These efforts did not necessarily lead to the intended results, and hence the reindeer remained “unruly”. Analyzing the shifting meanings contributes to a better understanding of the history of the European Arctic from the vantage point of animal history.