The musk ox, a relic of the last ice age, resides in some of the world's harshest climes. Now, a new film captures the animal in the brutal conditions that it calls home.
In Between, a short film from German filmmaker Rolf Steinmann, is a beautifully shot documentary of musk oxen in Norway, where a population of the animals were introduced to the Dovrefjell mountain range in the first half of the 20th century. The film carries a heavy-handed message of climate change, but the snowswept landscapes and dim northern light makes it worth a watch, and evoke a chilly world that is easy to imagine resembles that of the ice age.
Alaska is also home to an imported population of musk oxen, which were reintroduced to the state in 1930 when a small group of the animals from Greenland was moved first to Fairbanks, then to Nunivak Island in the Bering Sea. Animals from that growing herd were later transferred to other locations in Alaska, and today number about 4,000 in the region.