Laplander

“ I noticed on both sides of the river several summer huts of the Laplanders, in which they reside, for a short time together, during that season. A Laplander never remains more than a week on one [Pg 119] spot, not only because of seeking fresh pasture for his reindeer, but because he cannot bear to stay long in a place. He drives the whole herd together, young and old, into the river, to swim over to the opposite shore, which these animals easily perform, though the stream is more than eight gunshots wide. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whoever has grown up in scenes like these, and been accustomed from infancy to the uncontrolled freedom of the nomad state, receives impressions never to be erased; and thus we can not wonder that the wild Laplander believes his country to be a terrestrial paradise, and feels nowhere happy but at home. ”

“ Thirty years ago their number, counting all that could be found in Russian, Norwegian, and Swedish Lapland, only came to twelve thousand.
The sedentary Laplander is usually some poor reindeer proprietor, who having ruined himself, and being unable to continue the life of a wandering herdsman, becomes a beggar or a servant. If he has still a little money left, he settles down on the sea coast, and turns fisherman, while his wife spins wool. His existence in the midst of men of a different race is then a solitary one. He is a regular pariah, despised by both Swede and Norwegian. ”

“ Such is a pen portrait of a people who once ruled the whole of Scandinavia. A short trip inland brings us to the summer encampment of the Lapps, formed of a few rude huts, outside of which they live except in the winter months. A Lapp sleeps wherever fatigue overcomes him, preferring the ground, but often lying on the snow. They are a wandering race, 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no evidence that they ever enjoyed a higher degree of civilisation 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. ”

“ The Laplander uses the reindeer as we use the horse and as the Eskimo uses the dog, as a travelling animal. It is strong and swift and can easily draw a weight of two hundred pounds on a sledge. It can travel for a long time at a speed of nine or ten miles an hour.
A rich Laplander is a man who owns a great many reindeer, some of them having herds of two thousand or more. To the men of Lapland, as we are told, "the reindeer serves as a substitute for horse, cow, sheep, and goat." It gives fine milk, is a good traveller, its hair is of use, and its flesh and skin are of much value. ”

“ The independent life of this nomadic people is not without its charm. Accustomed from his infancy to privations and fatigues of every kind, the Laplander suffers little. His body acquires an extraordinary vigour, and most of our maladies are unknown to him. If during a journey a Lapland woman gives birth to a child, she places the new-born in a piece of hollow wood, where a hole has been cut out to receive the little one’s head ”

“ 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. ”

“ As often as he appears standing on the shore, or in the ship by them, they say he makes their fishing successful, and kills birds that happen to fly by with his Gun, which he bestows upon those that are present. It is reported that a Laplander being to guide one of the Kings Lieutenant, when he came over against a mountain where Storejunkar was supposed to dwell, he stood still, and setting the helve of his Ax down upon the Ice, turned it round, professing that he did it in honor of their munificent God, who dwelt there. ”

“ In the frigid regions of the north, the Laplander enjoys many comforts which he fancies could never be obtained in any other latitude, and the Bushman of Africa, following the wild animals of that region, and needing no covering to shield him from the burning rays of the sun, deems his lot the happiest that can be. The human race are gradually increasing in number, and there is scarcely a spot capable of being inhabited at all, but they are found there ”

“ A Laplander, therefore, whose family consists of four persons, including [Pg 169] himself, when he has no other meat, kills a reindeer every week, three of which are equal to an ox; he consequently consumes about thirty of those animals in the course of the winter, which are equal to ten oxen, whereas a single ox is sufficient for a Swedish peasant.
The peasants settled in this neighbourhood, in time of scarcity eat chaff, as well as the inner bark of pine trees separated from the scaly cuticle. They grind and then bake it in order to render it fit for food. ”

“ The Laplanders' gloves are made of skin taken from the legs of the animal; their hairy shoes, of that from its forehead between the horns, such being worth two dollars, copper money; while those made from the skin of the legs, being much thinner, are of very little or no value.
A Laplander never goes barefoot, though he has nothing to serve him for stockings but hay (Carex sylvatica, Fl. Brit.) . Sometimes he buys leather for shoes or boots from his neighbours.
The people of this country boil their meat in water only, without any addition or seasoning, and drink the broth. ”

“ The Laplander finds in his country animals by whose aid this intercourse is brought about, i.e. reindeer, who find sufficient sustenance in a dry moss which they have to scratch out for themselves from under the snow, and who are easily tamed and readily permit themselves to be deprived of that freedom in which they could have remained if they chose. ”

“ When roused by the prospect of conquest, or disposed to act on a plan, they spread their dominion, and their system of imagination, over mighty tracts of the earth: when possessed of property and of settlement, they set the example of a lively invention, and superior ingenuity, in the practice of arts, and the study of science. The Laplander, on the contrary, like the associate of his climate, is hardy, indefatigable, and patient of famine; dull rather than tame ”

“ When he grows a little older, he learns to follow these animals, which are always quick-paced, insomuch that it is more laborious to keep up with them than with a herd of goats, and more difficult to run after them than to frisk about with a parcel of calves. If therefore a rope-dancer, or a running-footman, acquires great agility by perpetual practice, no wonder that a Laplander, who till he is married, and often all his life long, runs habitually after [Pg 328] the reindeer, should rival any of them in swiftness of foot. ”

“ A reindeer may be driven in a carriage twelve (Swedish) miles in a day, or, at the utmost, fifteen; but the animal is generally killed immediately afterwards with the Laplanders' spears, and eaten.
The Laplanders are perhaps so called from the (Swedish) word lappa, to sew or patch together, because their garments usually answer to that description.
The degree of cold is certainly greater on the alps than in less elevated regions; for instance, it is colder in Jamtland than at Tornea, though the former lies about one hundred miles further south. ”

“ The wind is excessively powerful in this alpine region, so that sometimes it is impossible to stand against it, both men and sledges being overturned by its violence.
It blew so hard at the place where I now was, that one of the windows of the curate's house was blown in upon the floor.
Every Laplander constantly carries a sort of pole or stick, tipped with a ferule, [Pg 49] and furnished with a transverse bit of wood. Whenever he is tired, he leans his arms and nose against it to rest himself.
Such as live in the forests are dexterous marksmen, but not those who inhabit the alps. ”

“ The Lapland women are accustomed to sew all the clothes and shoes, and to cook all such articles of food as are made of milk; but the men dress the meat, fish, and fowl. If the housewife happens not [Pg 341] to be at hand, the preparation of the milk dishes falls upon the husband, but not otherwise. The Laplanders in this part of Norway, who have become cultivators of the ground, use scythes whose upper end rests on a projecting piece of wood set on the ground, as on a pivot, another piece opposite to it serving for a handle. ”

“ In this design, the plot of a particular person was most remarkable, as is related by Ericus, and recorded by John Buræus. One single man of the Birkarli went towards Lapland to way-lay the Laplanders in their return from Birkala, (at this time no one inhabited on the North side of that allotment) and ordered his wife to cover him over with snow, in the middle of the way where the Laplanders must necessarily pass over him. ”

“ And the same Description which Saxo gives of these, belongs as well to the Laplanders, that they are the farthest People towards the North, living in a Clime almost inhabitable, good archers and hunters, wanderers, and of an [17] uncertain habitations, wheresoever they kill a beast making that their mansion, and they slide upon the snow in broad wooden shoes. Besides all this, the Norwegians and Danes call the Laplanders, Fenni, as may be seen in Petr. Claud. where he divides the Finlanders into Siofinnar, i. e. maritime Finlanders, and Lappefinner ”

“ Besides he is generally worship’d in all barbarous and pagan Countries, and if he be adored for his light and heat by those People, who enjoy the benefit of a warm air and temperate climate, how much more by the Laplanders, who for no small space endure the hardship of continual night and bitter frosts? ”

“ 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 Laplanders have not any houses like other Northern People, it having bin their custom to wander up and down, and so, sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, to set up small sheds for their present use: so that they had no certain habitations, but having eaten and consumed the fish and beasts in one place, they march to another, carrying their sheds or tents with them. ”

“ Now those that are skilled in this art, have command chiefly over the winds that blew at their birth; so that this wind obeys principally one man, that another, as if they obtained this power when they first received their breath; now as this belongs chiefly to the Finlappers and Finlanders of Norway, so doth the stopping of the course of ships, which is altogether of the same nature. This is also attributed to the Laplanders, who according to the different affection they have for Merchants, make the Sea either calmer, or more tempestuous. ”

“ The same seems to be the case of the Finlanders, who being brought under the Jurisdiction of others, and holding more frequent commerce with their neighbours, lost much of their ancient manner of speaking, which the Laplanders on the contrary living a more solitary life, it is probable, do still keep uncorrupt. Wherefore it is no wonder if in their language we meet with many words, which compared with those of the modern Finlanders, seem to have nothing of likeness ”