I was amused with the mode in which these Laplanders take brandy. After they have laid hold of the mug, they dip their forefingers into the liquor, and rub a little on their foreheads, as well as on the middle of their bosoms. On inquiring the reason,
I was told their intention was that the brandy might not prove hurtful either to the head or breast.
Some people here were regaling themselves with fresh fish, of the kind lately mentioned (Salmo Albula), which having boiled into a mass like pap or flummery, they were eating out of their hands.
The dress of the Laplanders is, in one particular at least, very wisely contrived. Their thick collars effectually protect the throat and breast, which being furnished with numerous nerves and small muscles, and being the seat of the windpipe and of many principal veins and arteries, are very important and susceptible parts. The neck moreover, from its slender shape, is peculiarly exposed to cold. Hence the protection of clothing is found very necessary to the parts in question. For want of it our young women suffer much injury, which our youths avoid by running into the contrary extreme of tying their neckcloths
so tight as to make themselves as red in the face as if they were half strangled.
We Swedes are accustomed to have all our clothing made very tight. Not only the neckcloth, but the coat, waistcoat, breeches, stockings, sleeves, &c., must all stick close to the body, and the tighter they are the more fashionable. The Laplanders, on the contrary, wear only two, and those slight, bandages about them, which moreover are broad, and therefore less injurious than a narrow bandage in any part. Those to which I allude are the waistband and knees of their breeches, both made sufficiently loose and easy.
To-day I gathered the following plants.—A reed-like panicled Grass, with a very slender branched stem. (This appears to have been Arundo Calamagrostis, Fl. Lapp. n. 42.)
A great aquatic Carex, with inflated, whitish, pendulous spikes. In more dry situations they were upright and shorter,
but in every other particular the same. (C. vesicaria.) A grass with a slender dark-coloured panicle, approaching the stem. (Agrostis rubra, Fl. Lapp. n. 46.)