Lapps

“ The Lapps lead a semi-nomadic life. The settlements in which they live are called pagosts, each group of Lapps having its particular summer and winter pagost. The latter is usually inland near the forests, where they herd their deer in winter. In summer they wander nearer to the coasts and lakes for the sake of the fishing. The winter dwelling of the Lapp is called a toopa, a small smoky sod-covered hut, covering some 150 to 200 square feet ”

“ They came here to a people called Fin-Lapps, who, though they dwell in low wretched huts by the sea, and live almost like wild beasts, in any case are said to be much more peaceable than the people who are called wild Lapps. ”

“ The Lapps have high cheek-bones like the hill people near Assam, but they are shorter than any people I have yet seen. Reindeer milk is their chief means of subsistence, and reindeer is their sole property. There was a glacial time when this strange animal lived in the south of Europe, but it is extinct now except in Lapland. We saw a herd of them in this encampment. Some of the Lapps speak Norwegian—and they had brought skin purses and boots and horn-spoons and knives (their own manufacture) for sale among the passengers. ”

“ I kept visiting one Sea Lapp and his family after another, and had a good time—living on fish and reindeer meat, for the Sea Lapps own reindeer which are kept for their relations or friends further in the interior. Sea Lapps intermarry much with river Lapps, and also with nomadic Lapps. They form really one family. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are, like their neighbours the Lapps, small in stature, and they resemble them in face, clothing, customs and language. The only way in which they differ from the Lapps is, that the latter are nomads, while the Finns of this part have fixed dwellings. They possess only a few reindeer and a little cattle. They are also called Sea Lapps, while the other nomads are called Mountain Lapps.... ”

“ In this church hamlet were a number of very old Lapps, men and women who could no longer follow their reindeer and endure a hard, wandering life. Thither also the sick or the lame come, to stay until they get well or die. Two Lapps were pointed out to me who were nearly one hundred years old.
The inhabitants of these Lapp hamlets are not nomadic; they live on the produce of their farms, the [147] increase of their reindeer, by catching salmon, and in employing themselves as sailors on the fishing-boats of the Arctic Sea, which they reach by descending the rivers. ”

“ Those of the modern Lapps whose manner of life most reminds us of Ottar’s “Finns” are perhaps the so-called Skolte-Lapps on the south side of the Varanger Fjord. Helland [1905, p. 157] says of them: “They have few reindeer and keep them not so much for their flesh and milk as for transport. Their principal means of subsistence is salmon and trout fishing in the river, and a little sea-fishing in the fjord on Norwegian ground. They are also hunters.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is one difficulty in identifying the Elves and Dwarfs with the Lapps, and that is the fact that the Dwarfs are regarded, and have been regarded, as accomplished metal workers, especially sword-smiths, whereas no such an art exists among the Lapps of to-day. It is, however, possible enough that a migration into Europe of iron-working Lapps may have taken place, just as the Gipsies came in and engrossed at one time the trade of pottery and of tinware makers. ”

“ The country of the Lapps is strange. Half the year it is light most of the time, for the sun never sets in the middle of summer, and the other half of the year it is dark most of the time, and the stars shine all day in winter.
Ten months of the year it is winter, and then the little Lapp men and the little Lapp women drive over the snow in small boats, which are called pulks. There is no horse harnessed before the pulk, but a reindeer. Have you ever seen a reindeer? ”

“ A rise in salary kept three of the men, but the following season they wanted more than we had funds to meet, and we were forced to decide, wrongly, I fear, to let them go. The old herder warned me, "No Lapps, no deer"; but I thought too much in terms of Mission finances, the Government having withdrawn their grant toward the herders' salaries. Trusting to the confidence in their own ability of the locally trained men, I therefore let the Lapp herders go home. The love of the Lapps for their deer is like a fisherman's for his vessel, and seems a master passion. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sometimes they had as many as four, on the top of one another, over their fur dresses; they wore necklaces of large glass beads, round their waists were silver belts, and their fingers were ornamented with rings. They wore trousers of reindeer skin, as the Lapp women do universally. The men wore peaked caps.
These people were short of stature, compactly but slightly built, with strong limbs, their light weight allowing them to climb, jump, and run quickly. There are no heavy men with big stomachs among them. Quite a number of Lapps have fair hair and blue eyes. ”

“ But much of the evidence adduced for these theories is highly questionable. The contents of the so-called Lapps’ graves found in various parts of Scandinavia are often sufficient in themselves to show that the appellation must be a misnomer, and the syllable Lap or Lapp found in many names of places can often be proved to have no connexion with the Lapps. [5] They occupied their present territory when they are first mentioned in history. According to Düben the name first occurs in the 13th century—in the Fundinn Noregr, composed about 1200, in Saxo Grammaticus, and in a papal bull of date 1230 ”

“ The reindeer furnish the Lapps with everything they need,—their clothing, food, and shelter; and, as if that were not enough, they make good beasts of burden, and carry their masters wherever they wish to go. ”

“ The chief occupations of the Lapps are reindeer-rearing and fishing, and in winter, the transport of goods by means of their deer. They are unfortunately bad husbandmen, utterly reckless about the increase of their herds, and never dreaming of looking upon them as sources of gain. Deer-herding is not, in their eyes, a regular business, they merely keep such head as are required for domestic uses, that is, for food, clothing and travelling. Very few Lapps own big herds, while most of them hardly know or care how many in reality they have. ”

“ Lapps, because they paid to two or even three states—Russia, Denmark and Sweden.
The Lapps within the historical period have considerably recruited themselves from neighbouring races. Shortness of stature [2] is their most obvious characteristic, though in regard to this much exaggeration has prevailed. Düben found an average of 4.9 ft. for males and a little less for females; Mantegazza, who made a number of anthropological observations in Norway in 1879, gives 5 ft. and 4.75 ft., respectively (Archivio per l’antrop., 1880) . Individuals much above or much below the average are rare. ”

“ The Russian Lapps are also for the most part fishers, as is natural in a district with such an extent of coast and such a number of lakes, not to mention the advantage which the fisher has over the reindeer keeper in connexion with the many fasts of the Greek Church. They maintain a half nomadic life, very few having become settlers in the Russian villages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are treated by their parents more or less as if they were grown up, and allowed to do much as they please. Consequently, they become self-willed, and have little respect for their elders.
After all, the mode of life of the Lapps does not differ very greatly from that of our own gipsies, though of the two the Lapps are certainly the better people. The wandering spirit is inherent in both, but a portion of each sooner or later shakes it off, and leads a more settled life. ”

“ It may be supposed that the Lapps, from these indications, are not models of masculine or feminine beauty; and Dr. Clarke asserts that, when aged, many of them, if exposed in a menagerie, might be mistaken for the long-lost transitional form intermediate between man and ape. And, certainly, there is something repulsive in the constant blinking of eyes rendered sore by the pungent [198] smoke of their huts, or the white glare of the snow, as well as in the expression of obstinacy and low cunning which one reads in every feature. ”

“ The night was cold and splendidly clear. We were obliged to leave the river on account of rotten ice, and took to the open plains, where our deers sank to their bellies in the loose snow. The leading animals became fractious, and we were obliged to stop every few minutes, until their paroxysms subsided. I could not perceive that the Lapps themselves exercised much more control over them than we, who were new to the business. The domesticated reindeer still retains his wild instincts, and never fails to protest against the necessity of labour. ”