The Yamal Peninsula, in the far West of the Siberian Arctic, is home to nomadic reindeer herders who have preserved a strikingly traditional culture, way of life and system of spiritual beliefs. Dressing in home-made reindeer-fur clothes and living in conical reindeer-hide tents they constantly move camp with their 10,000-head herds of reindeer in search of grazing, travelling by reindeer sledge and following millennia-old migration routes. Physically they seem something like a cross between Mongolians and native Americans and their language is completely unrelated to Russian. Their religious views have them in a world full of gods and spirits inextricably intertwined with the reindeer, and their daily lives are governed by the observance of various of laws relating to the spirits and reindeer. The Yamal is the place in Russia where large scale nomadic reindeer herding and the culture of the herders has been best preserved. Although there are around fifty reindeer-herding ethnic