Norway’s blustery Fosen Peninsula is a long way from anywhere, its mountains sustaining the Indigenous Sami and their reindeer for centuries. These same peaks are vital to the kingdom’s wind energy plans, and native herder Lena Haugen says her people pay the price.
Snaking through the snowy terrain are dozens of sky-high wind turbines, built on Sami land by state-controlled Fosen Vind. When the machines came, the reindeer left, spooked by the cacophony of construction and the whoosh of spinning blades.
For the Sami, that migration threatened a core part of their culture and subsistence economy. So they pushed back, and last year the nation’s highest court sided with them, ruling that 151 turbines in traditional grazing patches violate the Samis’ human rights under international law.