This is Vesku, a two-year-old reindeer buck who calls Finland home. He’s also the world’s first reindeer influencer and a newly appointed professional wilderness advocate for Visit Finland.
We’ll assume he was pretty busy leading up to Christmas. But just two days after, he dropped a teaser as his very first Instagram post.
Like with reindeer, Finland and its northern area known as “Lapland” (aka Santa’s home turf) is usually associated with snowy winters. Vesku’s mission is to let the world know how great Finland’s summer is – Both for reindeer and for humans. With beautiful scenery, pristine lakes, and lush forests – It’s a nature-lovers dream. And being that north, the days are super long in the summer. So if you visit Finland in the summer, a sunny day will score you around 18 hours of daylight and up to 24 hours in Lapland! Then you compare that to the typical length of a summer day in the United States, you’re getting like a 50% bonus of fun in the sun!
Wondering what the story is behind this unique cream-coated reindeerfluencer? No, he’s not a nepo (fur) baby of Santa Claus. He was actually orphaned as a young reindeer and lives at the Kujala reindeer farm in Kuusamo. Calling both reindeer and human guardians his family, he became used to socializing with people and making public appearances.
This led to his new career, which started with filming a series of videos last summer – Where he got to live it up like a human travel influencer. He explores the great outdoors with forest walks and mountain climbing. He swam and took part in yoga sessions. He also got his foodie on with a lil’ foraging.
Make sure to follow Vesku on Instagram at @veskuthereindeer. (And please don’t DM him for Rudolph’s private Instagram, we already tried)