Forget poor Rudolph. It's the guy who has to herd him who has it tough.

Reindeer herders have the most dangerous line of work in Sweden, according to a new study that analyzed the causes of deaths among all jobs in the country of 9 million people.

Among the herders, who are mostly indigenous Sami in the country's far north, there were 150 deaths on the job between 1961 and 2000, said Per Sjoelander, one of the authors of "Fatal Accidents and Suicide Among Reindeer Herding Samis in Sweden."

The number of deaths was more than more than twice that for farmers and more than three times the total for construction workers during the same period.

"It's a dangerous job," Sjoelander said Wednesday. "They drive around on vehicles in difficult terrain and on thin ice. They work a lot. They work in a tough climate. So, there are many reasons behind this."

The researchers compared statistics on work-related accidents from a government death registry.

"The reindeer herders are often by themselves when working, which may be a factor to the high number of fatal, work-related accidents," said Sjoelander, who works in the Southern Lapland Research Department in Vilhelmina, 400 miles north of Stockholm.

The Sami, once called the Lapps, are believed to have followed herds of reindeer to Europe's northern fringe thousands of years ago. Like the Inuit of North America, they are an indigenous people of the Arctic.

There an estimated 300,000 reindeer in Sweden. The hides are used for clothing, handicrafts and fashion, and the meat for food. Reindeer herding is, together with the Sami languages, considered to be the core of the Sami culture.

The study was conducted for the Swedish Sami parliament with the aim of determining if an increase in the number of motor vehicles and socio-economic pressure had increased the risk for fatal, work-related accidents.

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