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Headless reindeer left outside village hall

The Local Norway
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Headless reindeer left outside village hall
The decapitated reindeer in Porsanger - Photo: Bjørn Arne Johansen

Council workers in the village Lakselv met a grisly sight on arrival at work on Wednesday: a mutilated and headless reindeer had been placed, frozen solid, outside the council offices.

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"It need hardly be said that this is not something you want to be faced with when you arrive at work," the deputy council leader Helge Nicolaisen told NRK. 
 
The village, which is situated on the far-northern Arctic tip of Norway, quickly called in Norway's Reindeer Police, the 14-strong unit tasked with protecting reindeer and their ethnic Sami herders. 
 
The specialist reindeer officers now plan to thaw and then pass it to the Norwegian nature inspectorate (SNO) to perform an autopsy, most likely on Friday. 
 
Nicolaisen told NRK that she had no idea whether the corpse had been placed outside the council offices as a prank, a protest or some kind of warning. 
 
"We do not know whether it is young people doing a prank or something else," she said. 
 
Per Valved, the director of the Reindeer Police, said that he had also yet to determine why the corpse had been placed where it was. 
 
"We don't know whether there's someone who wants to give some kind of signal, or whether it's just a coincidence that it is set outside the village hall," he said.  
 
"Most likely it was a joke," said Bjørn Arne Johansen, who first reported the story in Sagat, a local Sami newspaper. "A similar carcass was seen in Skoganvarre, about 40 km south of Lakselv a while ago. This one isn't there anymore, and some people think it has been moved to the town hall for fun." 

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