Reindeer domestication has been pulled back. We'd associated the reindeer with the Saami in northern Fennoscandia, in the middle-ages. Now they're finding it among their (very!) distant cousins, the Samoyed-speaking Nenets. Year Zero AD.
This suggests the reindeer was the killer-app in the icier and flatter parts of northern Eurasia, where horses and oxen don't tread. This is what enabled the northernmost "Uralic" peoples to dominate the Fur Road north of the Mongols et al.. Of course they had no cities to raid up there so the various steppe raiders didn't bother.
The dog-sled is another possibility but you have to share meat with ol' Rover, where Rudolph just lives off the land.
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