Swedish Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter has an article about a fly that lays eggs on reindeer, and that sometimes comes in contact with humans with occasional human hosts as a result. The fly is reported to populate the most northern part of Norway close to Hammerfest.
The "news" is really old news and the fly and its parasite is well known, which is not very surprising since reindeer herding has been a major way of life for the indigenous Sami population of the northern part of Scandinavia for thousands of years.
The real news of the article is instead that it is an example of the systematic prejudice against the indigenous people of Sweden, the Sami. This is classic prejudicial propaganda, alleging that a specific ethnic group is responsible for diseases, plagues, parasites and similar unwanted consequences.
The Sami population is a thorn in the side of the "wolf huggers" of Sweden since obviously the rights of the indigenous Sami population and the reindeer herding is in the way of an inhibited spreading of wolves. The other week some wolves killed a whole bunch of sheep, left them dead, in an obvious sport killing frenzy, which the russian wolf stock is known to engage in. Not surprisingly shortly after this, media in Sweden is reporting about this obscure fly far above the polar circle in Norway, where not even trees grow, spreading prejudicial notions about the reindeer herding and the Sami way of life.
It probably won't be long before som "do good" environmentalist demands to have costly and cumbersome veterinary routines, which for all practical purposes is no more that state legitimized sanctions against the reindeer herding and the Sami population's traditional way of life.
