The Lapland thread is made out of the tendons of reindeer fawns half a year old. Such thread is covered with tin foil for embroidery, its pliability rendering it peculiarly fit for the purpose. The tendons are dried in the sun, being hung over a stick. They are never boiled.
To show to what a high degree of perfection these people have arrived in the art of making such thread, I brought away a sample of it, which I believe none of our ladies could match.
Shoes and baskets made of birch bark are used both in Angermanland and Hel
singland, as well as ropes of the same material, which will not sink in water, but these are not in general use.
The bows which serve the Laplanders for shooting squirrels are composed of two different kinds of wood, laid parallel to each other. The innermost is birch, the outermost of what they term kior, kioern or tioern. (This is procured from a tree of the Common Fir, Pinus sylvestris, that happens to grow in a curved form, usually in marshy places, or on the banks of rivers, and whose contracted side is hard like box: see vol. i. p. 255; also Fl. Lapp. n. 346, λ.) If this be not practised, the bows are more apt to snap. Each layer of wood is externally convex, yet not so much as to render the bow quite cylindrical.
When the Laplanders expect any visitors, they are particularly careful to have plenty of ris (branches of the dwarf birch) spread on the floor, under the reindeer skins on which they sit; otherwise they would be thought deficient in civility, and the mis
tress of the family would be censured as a bad manager, when the guests returned to their own homes.
The mode of their entertainment is as follows.
First, if the stranger arrives before their meat is set over the fire to boil, they present him either with iced milk, or with some kind of berries mixed with milk, or perhaps with cheese, or with kappi, (see vol. i. p. 281.) Afterwards, when the meat is sufficiently cooked, and they have taken it out of the pot, they put into the water, in which it has been boiled, slices of cheese made of reindeer milk. This is a testimony of hospitality, and that they are disposed to make their guest as welcome as they can. They next serve up some of their dry or solid preparations of milk.
The marriages of the Laplanders are conducted in the following manner. (This subject was treated in vol. i. p. 276, like Sterne's "history of the king of Bohemia and his seven castles," no doubt to the