Pirita (Mirjami Kuosmanen) is a young Saami woman living in Lapland with her parents. She and Aslak (Kalervo Nissila), a young man from her village, fall in love and marry. Aslak is a Reindeer herder and spends weeks away from home. Aslak gives Pirita a white reindeer fawn to keep her company while he is away. The couple lives in a small village in the desolate wilderness. Spending so much time alone in the frozen wasteland begins to affect Pirita. She becomes lonely and is desperate for companionship.
Pirita visits the local shaman, Tsalkku-Nilla (Arvo Lehesmaa), to get a love potion hoping it will help. The shaman mixes the potion and begins his ritual. He tells her that for her wish to come true she must sacrifice, to the stone god, the first living thing she meets on her way home. If she does that then no reindeer herder will be able to resist her. During the ritual he begins to see that there is something different about Pirita. He realizes that she is actually a witch. Her powers have not yet materialized but he sees a surge of intensity exude from her.
Just before she reaches home, Pirita sees Aslak in the distance, but the white reindeer fawn is the first living thing that reaches her. Aslak says he came back from the herds to spend some time with her. After Aslak leaves again, Pirita takes the fawn to the stone god and sacrifices the poor creature. What Pirita doesn’t know is that she has released the witch spirit inside her. Pirita changes into a white reindeer. When a herder sees the reindeer, he follows it to capture it. When he gets to it, the deer turns in Pirita. He is drawn to her. Pirita turns into a vampire and kills the herder.
Several herders are mysteriously killed. The legend of the white reindeer begins to circulate. One herder tries to shoot the deer but the gun, as stated in the legend, explodes and Pirita is standing there laughing. The herder is injured but tells the others about the encounter. When he sees Pirita he recognizes her as the witch. She runs and is chased but gets away. The village now knows that there is a witch in the area. The villagers begin making spears out of cold steel which is the only way to kill a witch.
“The White Reindeer” AKA “Valkoinen peura” in Finnish and “Den Vita Renen” in Swedish was released in 1952 and was directed by Erik Blomberg. It is a Finnish horror film and was based on a Saami myth. It was the first Finnish film to compete in the Cannes film festival where it earned the Jean Cocteau-led jury special award for Best Fairy Tale Film in 1953, and in 1956 was the only Finnish film ever to win a Golden Globe Award. It won for Best Foreign Film. In 2016-2017 the film was restored by the National Audiovisual Institute of Finland.
Not a lot happens for the first half hour or so, but that’s OK since the cinematography is fantastic. The film has some eerie and stark imagery. It gives the story a haunting flair. The mythology and the story, about a shape shifting vampire reindeer, are interesting and quite unique. The special effects are very limited, and the dialogue is sparse, but those aspects don’t really matter. The unusual mythos and the overall visuals are stunning and makeup for any drawbacks.
The recipe for a love potion in Lapland Is: Herbs from beyond ten fells beside ten streams, some graveyard soil and the balls of ten bull moose.
The Saami are an indigenous people who reside in Lapland. Lapland covers a portion of Sweden, Finland, Norway and Kuola Peninsula in Russia.