Lapland

“ Herr Forström prepared us for the journey by a good breakfast of reindeer's marrow, a justly celebrated Lapland delicacy, and we set out with a splendidly clear sky and a cold of 12° below zero. The Muonio valley was superb, towards sunrise, with a pale, creamy, saffron light on the snow, the forests on the tops of the hills burning like jagged masses of rough opal, and the distant range of Palastyntre bathed in pink light, with pure sapphire shadows on its northern slopes. These Arctic illuminations are transcendent; nothing can equal them, and neither pen nor pencil can describe them. ”

“ The interior of Lapland lay beyond—a place of great lakes and rivers, of vast deer-packs and nomad herders; and we hungered to be amongst it all. Over night—under the blaze of a twelve o’clock sun—we had commissioned a man to find us carriers, and in the morning we crossed the river below that lonely Russian chapel, we and our goods, and in ten minutes the real troubles of the journey had fairly begun. ”

“ And stately, serene men kneel there
Before the lotus flowers.
In Lapland, the natives are filthy,
Flat headed, broad-mouthed, and small;
They cower round their fires, and bake there
Their fish, and jobber and squall. ”

“ And north of Finland lies Lapland, which the Finns now call Lappi, but in the olden days they called it Pohjola (that is, Northland) . There the night lasts for whole weeks and months about Christmas, and in the summer again they have no night at all for many weeks. For more than half the year their country is wrapped in snow and frost, and yet they are both of them a kind-hearted people, and among the most honest and truthful in the world. ”

“ The Scandinavian portion of Lapland presents the usual characteristics of the mountain plateau of that peninsula—on the west side the bold headlands and fjords, deeply-grooved valleys and glaciers of Norway, on the east the long mountain lakes and great lake-fed rivers of Sweden. Russian Lapland is broadly similar to the lower-lying parts of Swedish Lapland, but the great lakes are more generally distributed, and the valleys are less direct. The country is low and gently undulating, broken by detached hills and ridges not exceeding in elevation 2500 ft. ”

“ Gaily and cheerfully, meantime, we discussed the prospects of our visit to Lapland; for the Northern part of Finland is the country of reindeer and Laps, and thither we had made up our minds to go as a fitting finish to our summer jaunt. From Uleåborg we were to take the steamer to Tornea, and there to commence a drive which promised to be most interesting, if a little cold and perhaps not quite so pretty as our long journey through Savolax in kärra or carts. ”

“ If the driver is not very careful the sleigh may be upset.
It is in Lapland that you may see this kind of a sleigh. The people who live there are called Lapps. They are short and stout. You would think the men and women were boys and girls.
It is very cold in Lapland. The summer is short, and the winter is long. So the Lapps have to wear warm clothes most of the year.
The men and women and boys and girls in Lapland dress much alike. In the winter they wear a long outside coat called a _kap'ta_. It reaches below the knees. It is made of reindeer skin with the hair left on. ”

“ But now supposing all this true, and that the Biarmia of the Ancients, and Scritfinnia were the same, ’tis a question still whether Lapland be distinct from them or not. Joh. and Ol. Magnus in their Geographic Tables and descriptions, make them distinct Countries. But that cannot be; for if Scritfinnia and Biarmia reach one way to Helsingia and Jamtia, on the other to Finland; if they lye so near these Provinces, and extend to the Bay of Bothnia (both which have bin demonstrated before) I do not see where Lapland can have any place at all. ”

“ Imagine in the far North, almost on the borders of Lapland, being addressed in our own tongue by a man in rags. We were astonished; yet all over Finland one meets with sailors who speak the King's English, and in Uleåborg we were struck with the fact on two other occasions—the first being when the man at the helm of a small penny steamer addressed us, and the second when a blue-coated policeman entered into conversation. ”

“ In Russian Lapland there is an obvious intermixture with the Russian moujik, and in Lapland proper they naturally marry largely with the all-pervading Finn.
The inhabitant of Lapland is not so light-fingered as his more western brother, perhaps because there is less opportunity of pilfering. And he does not make himself so unpopular, because there are fewer aliens for him to get unpopular with, and no one goes out regularly to shoot him as a domestic nuisance. In fact the Lapps we were in contact with (and the Finns, too, for that matter) never stole any of our particular properties ”

“ In the uplands of Swedish Lapland, and to some extent in Russian Lapland, the lakes afford the principal means of communication; it is almost impossible to cross the forests from valley to valley without a native guide. In Sweden the few farms of the Swedes who inhabit the region are on the lake shores, and the traveller must be rowed from one to another in the typical boats of the district, pointed at bow and stern, unusually low amidships, and propelled by short sculls or paddles. ”

“ Lapland (28) , a stretch of country in the N. of Europe, between the Atlantic and the White Sea; is divided between Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Its climate is very severe; mountainous in the W., it becomes more level in the E., where are many marshes, lakes, and rivers; the summer is never dark, and there are six to eight weeks of winter never light. The Lapps, of whom 18,000 are in Norwegian Lapland, are closely allied to the Finns, small of stature, thick lipped, and with small piercing eyes ”

“ 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? ”

“ RUSSIAN LAPP’S DAUBSFEST AT BORIS GLEB
The Lapp in Lapland has his moments of personal cleanliness, as will be remarked in their place. The Russian Lapp, who resides outside Lapland proper, especially if he be of the fisher variety, scorns the outward application of soap and water. In summer a good cake of dirt, especially if it be well smeared in with tar, goes far to ward off the incessant gnawings of the mosquito; and in winter, when the mercury of a thermometer moves always sluggishly far below zero, what poor man would willingly strip off an extra coat of clothing? ”

“ Amidst the barbarity and darkness which reign in Lapland, there appear strictures of light, which will entertain the eie of the most knowing observer; as the Stars are no less remarkable then is the Sun it self. ”

“ And altho some learned men, who pretend they understood both languages of Finland and Lapland, confidently aver that they are altogether diverse: yet it will be easy to produce diverse men as well skill’d in them, as they that say the contrary. ”

“ When first I entered this country, I thought I was got into quite another world; the men are all of them pigmies to our tall, brawny Highlanders; they are, generally speaking, not above three cubits high, insomuch that though the whole country of Lapland is immensely large, and I have heard it reckoned by the inhabitants to be above a hundred German leagues in length, and fourscore and ten in breadth, yet I was the tallest man there, and looked upon as a giant. The district in which I live now, is called Uma Lapmark. ”

“ The country at present inhabited by the people called Laplanders, will be found north of this line. It is a boundary more imaginary than real: for in truth there is no political division known as Lapland, nor has there been for hundreds of years. ”

“ So that I take Lappi to signify no other than banish’t persons, which is the genuine signification of Lapp in the Lapland language; for the Laplanders were originally Finlanders, and from leaving their Country may be presum’d to have took their name; and that not of their own choosing, but the Finlanders [2] imposition, with whom to Lapp signifies to run away: whence the compellation seeming something scandalous, no person of quality to this day will endure to be call’d by it, tho from the Finlanders others Nations, as the Germans, Swedes and Moscovites, have learnt to call them so. ”

“ The village, separated from the Northern Ocean, by the barren, uninhabited ranges of the Kiölen Mountains, and from the Finnish settlements on the Muonio by the swampy table-lands we had traversed, is one of the wildest and most forlorn places in all Lapland. Occupying, as it does, the centre of a large district, over which the Lapps range with their reindeer herds during the summer, it is nevertheless a place of some importance, both for trade and for the education, organization, and proper control of the barely-reclaimed inhabitants. ”

“ Above the main entrance is a large paintin' representin' a scene in Lapland. Inside the inclosure are the huts of a Lapland Village, with the Laps all there to work at their own work.
What a marvellous change for them! Transported from a country where there is eight months of total darkness, and four months of twilight or midnight sun, and so cold that no instrument has ever been invented to tell how cold it is.
When the frozen seas and ice and snow is all they can see from birth till death.
I wonder what they think of the change to this dazzlin' daylight, and the grandeur and bloom of 1893! ”

“ Moreover the beast is naturally wild, and such still abound in Lapland, [131] but now multitudes are tamed for domestick service; those that are bred of tame ones, remain so, of which there is great plenty. ”

“ If a Lapland should nourish in it vast numbers, the successors of the old Biarmi, who can with looks or words bewitch other people, or sell Winds to Marriners, and have their Familiar Spirits which they bequeath to their Children when they die, and by their Enchanted Kettle-Drums can learn things done a Thousand Leagues off ”

“ They had a very large family, and to-day the whole earth is peopled with their children; those who do not live in Lapland are degenerates!”
A TYPICAL LAPP PEASANT.
From a Photograph.
Well, I went to Lapland, eager to see the semi-savages of whom I had heard so much. It is unnecessary to describe the earlier stages of my journey. Tromsö, Hammerfest, and Lyngseedt, though much frequented, are but large villages in the neighbourhood of which the nomad Lapps pasture their reindeer. ”

“ In the upper part of Lapland there are Mountains rising to such a vast hight, that the snow continues upon them Summer and Winter, and is never dissolved, but in other places the Land is every year over-flown with floods of melted snow. They have also very great frosts and mists, and good store of them, which sometimes so thicken the air, that the sight is quite obstructed, and Passengers cann’t distinguish one man from another to salute or avoid him, tho he be come close up to them. It is so extreme cold here in the Winter, that ’tis not to be endured but by those who have bin bred up in it. ”

“ Now this information was none of it very encouraging, and none of it very definite. It was most of it frankly given as depending on mere hearsay. And although we advertised our want largely, and tramped up and down the fish-strewn streets to see countless likely people, nowhere could we find a man who knew Lapland personally, much less one who would (for a fee) act as guide, much less one who could serve as guide and interpreter both. For here was another difficulty: the Lapps spoke Quivnsk (or Finnish) , and we did not. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in Lapland it implies that valuable acreage of reindeer pasture has been taken entirely away from that generation, and human existence will be correspondingly harder; and so the man who sets the forest ablaze not only injures his neighbours, but he inconveniences that much more important personage, himself. ”

“ But any one that will examine the histories of that time, will scarce find any thing that should move the Finlanders to leave their Country, as Ericus Sanctus hath made it appear in that Expedition in which he brought them under the Swedish Government, and planted among them the Christian Religion, which he made in the year 1150, when no small number of them the third time seem to have deserted their Country, and gone into Lapland. ”

“ No People certainly were ever guilty of so much folly as to impose forreign names upon so common things, if they had any Language of their own to express them in: as might be at large demonstrated from the Languages of the Germans, ancient Gaules, Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, &c. neither have we any reason to count it a hard inference if we should from hence gather, that the Laplanders themselves sprung from the Finlanders. ”

“ 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. ”