Octogenarian Hans Ulrich Schwaar is a retired teacher from Emmental/Switzerland who has spent much of the last 22 years among the Sami of Finland. In the little settlement of Näkkälä on the edge of the Arctic Circle he has found a home away from home with the reindeer breeder Iisakki-Matias Syväjärvi. Swiss director Peter Ramseier visited the two men many times. The film, like the books of Hans Ulrich Schwaar, provides an insight into the life and vanishing world of a people living close to nature. In magnificent footage of the landscape, he shows the culture clash between the traditional lifestyle of the Sami and the dubious achievements of modernism. Motorised sledges and four-wheel drives have transformed everyday life in the Finnish tundra, while EU directives have hit at the very heart of their values. As reindeer owner Syväjärvi explains with some regret at the end of the film, “We have to conform to Brussels regulations now in the way we keep our animals.” This is a film about a way of life far from the Central European rat-race.