Lapiths

“ If witchcraft is still practised in Lapland, it is done with small ostentation, but I am inclined to think the whole business has died out. The degenerate Lapps,—those whose fathers have at one time failed as deer-herders on the fjeld, and who have come down to being vagabond river-fishers, or mere prosperous lake-side farmers,—are moving with the times. Many of them can read, and some can write. Schoolmasters go amongst them during the idle months of winter. ”

“ As these men care little for the result, and have a far greater influence over the Laplander than either the government officials, or the lazy, timeserving missionaries, it is not probable that temperance will ever be introduced among these wretched people. Fortunately, only the coast Laplanders are at all times subject to this influence. The mountain people or those who dwell most of their time in the interior, are too distant from the “tap” to be so grievously affected by it. ”

“ Lastly every Lapmark being thus divided, it shall be committed to honest and good men, who, without either favor or prejudice, shall assign to every family its just portion: and thenceforth it shall not be lawfull for any Laplander, at his plesure to wander up and down all marches, as hath formerly bin used.” From the time of this Edict the Laplanders had their certain bounds and limits assigned them sufficient for the sustaining of their families. ”

“ They are usually classed as mountain, river, forest and sea Lapps. The mountain Lapps are wanderers, moving from place to place with their reindeer herds, which form their only wealth. The sea Lapps live along the streams and ocean, and subsist by fishing. The river and forest Lapps also wander, but have settled, keep domesticated animals and hunt and fish. The reindeer furnishes the Lapps with food and clothing, and serves as his beast of burden. There are about 400,000 reindeer in Lapland. In personal habits the Lapp is any thing but cleanly. All profess Christianity. ”

“ The Lapps are natural nomads, their wealth consisting solely in their herds of reindeer, to procure sustenance for which necessitates frequent changes of locality. A Laplander is rich, provided he owns enough of these animals to support himself and family. A herd that can afford thirty full-grown deer for slaughter annually, and say ten more to be sold or bartered, makes a family of a dozen persons comfortably well off. ”

“ An old navigator named Scrahthrift, while making a voyage of discovery northward, more than three centuries ago, wrote about the Lapps as follows: "They are a wild people, which neither know God nor [Pg 147] yet good order; and these people live in tents made of deerskins, and they have no certain habitations, but continue in herds by companies of one hundred or two hundred. They are a people of small stature and are clothed in deerskins, and drink nothing but water, and eat no bread, but flesh all raw." ”

“ Flesh is their favourite, in winter almost their only food, though they also use reindeer milk, cheese and rye or barley cakes. The sea Lapps are in some respects hardly to be distinguished from the other coast dwellers of Finmark. Their food consists mainly of cooked fish. The river Lapps, many of whom, however, are descendants of Finns proper, breed cattle, attempt a little tillage and entrust their reindeer to the care of mountain Lapps.
In Finland there are comparatively few Laplanders, and the great bulk of them belong to the fisher class. ”

“ All the Laplanders are blear-eyed, owing to the sharp wind, the glare on the snow, fogs, and smoke. Yet I never met any people who lead such easy, happy lives as the Laplanders. In summer they have two meals of milk a day, and when they have milked their reindeer or made cheese, they resign themselves to indolent tranquillity, not knowing what to do next.
When a Laplander wishes to marry he goes with all his nearest relatives to the hut of the young woman. He himself remains outside; but the others, laden with provisions and presents, enter and begin negotiations. ”

“ If any one wants to see a poor, ragged, diminutive, wizened, yet jolly race of human beings,—a race of beings who wear hairy garments, sup reindeer’s milk with wooden spoons, and dwell in big bee-hives,—he has only got to go to Lapland and see the Lapps. ”

“ It is chiefly in their dialect and creed that the two divisions differ; the imperfect Christianity of the Russian Lapps being that of the Greek Church, and their speech, although, I believe, intelligible to a Norwegian Lapp, being stamped with several well-marked peculiarities. It is the structure of their language that shows them to belong to the same stock as the Kwains of Finland, the difference of their complexion and stature being considerable; for the Lapp is dark-haired, dark-eyed, swarthy-skinned, under-sized, and weak-built, as is the Samoeid also. ”

“ They lived far up in Lapland, in Aimio, which lies near Tenojoki or the Tana River. (You can see it on the map of Finland, where Lapland can be found like a great nightcap on Finland's high head.) The place was barren and wild, but the Lapp and his wife felt sure that nowhere on the whole earth could you see such white snow, such clear stars, and such beautiful Northern Lights as at Aimio. There they had built themselves a hut such as Lapps usually live in. No large trees grew in that region,—only slender birches, that were more like bushes than trees—so where could they get wood for a house? ”

“ Nothing could be more absurd than to assert a community of physical origin for the three. The Magyars, among the finest representatives of a west European type, are no more like the Lapps than the Australian Bushmen; and the Baltic Finns are equally distinct. The Lapps, as our portraits illustrate, are among the broadest-headed people in the world. [39] Their squat faces show it. In stature they are among the shortest of the human species. ”

“ When he has acquired a little means it is not unusual for the fisher to settle down and reclaim a bit of land. The mountain and forest Lapps are the true representatives of the race. In the wandering life of the mountain Lapp his autumn residence, on the borders of the forest district, may be considered as the central point ”

“ From a Photograph.
An article dealing with a strange and little-known people—the Lapps. Living in a country where practically nothing grows, their whole lives are occupied with the reindeer, the one product of Lapland. A man’s wealth is reckoned in reindeer; he eats its flesh and drinks its blood for food, and his clothes are made of its skin. Small wonder, therefore, that the moss on which the animals live is more important to him than cereal crops, and that the highest form of Lapp art finds expression in the carving of reindeer bones. ”

“ There is no evidence that they ever enjoyed a higher degree of civilization than they do at present; and that is not one iota higher than exists among the Esquimaux of North America,—notwithstanding the advantage which the Laplander has in the domestication of a ruminating quadruped and a knowledge of the Christian religion. ”

“ These Lapp settlements in Northern Finland are few in number. It is said that there are not more than two thousand Lapps in Finland. The Finnish word Lapp or Lappu means Land-End folk. The Lapps use another name for themselves; it is Samelats and for their country, Same. Many of the Lapps are fishermen, but there are also forest and mountain Lapps.
One wonders how they could get along without the reindeer, which furnishes them with milk, meat, and even clothing, besides drawing their sledges. Because of these animals the Lapps prefer the open country where reindeer [41] moss is plentiful. ”

“ After all, then, in this strange country, where there is supposed to be “nothing but reindeer,” one may still find among these half-savage people financiers—like Mickel Nilsson Nia—poets, and artists—types which certainly go to show that the Lapps possess some of the attributes of a civilized nation. Music alone is unknown in Lapland, and this may be because the Lapp, with his boundless pride of race, considers he has no need of its chastening and refining influence. ”

“ An ordinary solid clock does not take the Laplander’s eye. He likes something flimsy, and if possible novel. At one place, hung on a peg driven into the logs of the wall, we were condemned to gaze hourly upon the exasperating device of a dentifrice advertisement, wherein a smiling young female drew a tooth-brush briskly across a beautiful set of cardboard teeth between every tick. I was half frantic with bites at that halt I remember, and deadly tired, and much wishful for sleep and forgetfulness. ”

“ Sometimes there is another church and small settlement in the upper valley, to which, once or twice in a summer, the Lapps come from great distances to attend service. To these, too, they sometimes bring their dead for burial, bearing them if necessary on a journey of many days. Though Lapland gives little scope for husbandry, a bad summer being commonly followed by a winter famine, it is richly furnished with much that is serviceable to man. There are copper-mines at the mountain of Sulitelma, and the iron deposits in Norrland are among the most extensive in the world. ”

“ Now we will see why ’tis call’d Lapponia and Lappia, the Etymology of which words is not yet agreed upon by the Learned. Ziegler thinks they were named so by the Germans, from the dulness and stupidity of the people, which the word Lappi signifies amongst them; but this seems improbable, since this Country is but of late known to the Germans, and none of their antient Writers make any mention of Lappia. Moreover, the Finlanders, Swedes and Russians, who differ much in their language from one another, as well as from the Germans, call it all by the same name ”

“ This is accomplished in zigzag lines,—each leading to a higher elevation. Down hill, the course upon skies is rapid almost as the flight of an arrow; and, by means of the long pole, rocks, ravines, and precipices, are shunned with a dexterity that is quite surprising. Altogether a Laplander, either in his reindeer sledge, or upon his long wooden “skies,” is as interesting a sight as may be seen anywhere.
After all that has been said, it will appear pretty clearly, that the Laplander, though dwelling so very near to civilized lands, is still very far distant from true civilization. ”

“ Their language is on the one side allied to Cheremissian. On the other it shows a nearer approach to Finnish (Suomi) than the other Eastern languages of the family, but it has also constructions peculiar to itself.
The Lapps are found in Norway, Sweden and Finland. They call themselves Sabme, but are called Finns by the Norwegians. They are the shortest and most brachycephalic race in Europe. The majority are nomads who live by pasturing reindeer, and are known as Mountain Lapps, but Lapps. others have become more or less settled and live by hunting or fishing. ”

“ To live, his beasts must live; and to find food for them he has constantly to move about over large desolate areas of the country; and so it is the scheme of his life which has divorced him [142] from the idea of fixed abode, and not the mere relish for vagabondage. We had not seen him in Arctic Lapland yet, this pastoral wanderer; the fishers and the farmer Lapps we had come across were only his refined descendants; and we were keenly anxious to get into his neighbourhood, and watch him herd his deer, and see the life he led in summer under the conical shelter of his la-wo. ”

“ The real race of the little people forms the lowest stratum which we can reach, to wit, at a level no higher, seemingly, than that of the present-day natives of Central Australia. Thus some of the birth stories of Cúchulainn and Étáin seem to have passed through their hands, and they bear a striking resemblance to certain notions of the Lapps (pp. 657–8) . In fact, the nature of the habitations of our little people, together with other points which might be mentioned, would seem at first sight to betoken affinity with the Lapps ”

“ THE GOD OF LOVE I THE MAY-DAY QUEEN This is the book of Lappo Lappi, called by his friends the careless, the happy-go-lucky, the devil-may-take-it, the God-knows-what. Called by his enemies drinker, swinker, tumbler, tinker, swiver. Called by many women that liked him pretty fellow, witty fellow, light fellow, bright fellow, bad fellow, mad fellow, and the like. Called by some women who once loved him Lapinello, Lappinaccio, little Lappo. Called now in God as a good religious should be, Lappentarius, from a sweet saint myself discovered—or invented; need we quibble?—in an ancient manuscript. ”

“ When the Rajah ventured to state his doubts, Babalatchi asked him in tones of calm remonstrance whether he could reasonably suppose that two oldish men—who had only one eye amongst them—and a young woman were likely to gain possession of anything whatever by violence? Charity was a virtue recommended by the Prophet. There were charitable people, and their hand was open to the deserving. Patalolo wagged his aged head doubtingly, and Babalatchi withdrew with a shocked mien and put himself forthwith under Lakamba's protection. ”

“ Others reflect more particularly the national characteristics of the Lapp folk. Thus, for instance, there is to be found among them a tradition of a general deluge, a universal catastrophe, whereof there still remains a dim reminiscence in the consciences of so many other primitive people.
Before the Lord destroyed mankind, so says the Lapp legend, there were people in Samelads (Lappland) , but when the Flood came upon the earth every living creature perished except two, a brother and sister, whom God conducted to a high mountain—Passevare—“The Holy Mountain.” ”