Nets are set in the lakes in winter to catch the Sijk fish (Salmo Lavaretus, or
Gwiniad.) Holes are made for this purpose in the ice, and the nets are dragged with a string. This is done from St. Andrew's day, (Nov. 30th,) to Christmas.
The Laplanders make their sledges serve for chests, when they are not used for their proper purpose, by constructing a sort of roof or convex covering, with an opening in the middle, to admit whatever they choose to store up within. This opening shuts with a moveable lid. Sledges in this state occasionally serve for the conveyance of goods from one place to another, the covering keeping them dry.
Caps are made of the skin of the Colymbus arcticus, (Black-throated Diver,) which is very tough when properly prepared. This bird has a grey ring round its neck, as described by Wormius.
I met with a Carex, bearing round capsules, full of black powder. (Probably Carex panicea, whose seeds are often infected with the ustilago or smut.)
July 26.
I shall here give a description of the Achier or sledge. This is a kind of travelling machine invented by the Laplanders, drawn along the ground like other sledges, and made of birch wood. The back part is upright, or nearly so, the lower part only being somewhat sloping inwards, and its form is roundish, the height a foot, the breadth a foot and a half. The body of the machine is like the hulk of a boat, with an obtuse keel, and consists of five longitudinal boards on each side, lying one over the edge of another; that which forms the keel being about an inch thick, and lying flat like the others. Each board is not externally plane, but convex, so that as the carriage is drawn over the snow it leaves several tracks or lines where it goes, the board which forms the keel only being quite flat. The boards, which are fixed at one extremity in a circular manner to the roundish board that makes the back, (or as
it were the stern,) are collected by their points at the other, and all bound together with a rope, for there are no nails to fasten them. The whole carriage is six feet in length, and from the back part to within two feet of the front its breadth is all the way about four feet. From that spot the keel begins to curve upwards, and the transverse dimensions are contracted gradually to a point. This sledge is drawn by a rope that goes through a hole in the front of the keel. The edges or sides of the machine do not curve outwards, but rather inwards. When any covering is to be put on, which is always done in part when any person is to travel sitting in this carriage, and entirely, from one end to the other, when it is intended to be used for the conveyance of goods, two or three semicircular or archlike bows are erected, fixed by their ends within the edges of the carriage, which serve to support a covering of seal-skin, or cloth, whose margin next the back is loose, and so far distant from that part
as to allow the traveller to sit upright, his legs lying under the cover, while the said margin is tied round his waist, like an apron, serving to keep the snow out of the hollow part of the machine. The person of the traveller is further secured by strings fixed to the edges of the carriage, which lace around him across the top, so as to prevent his being thrown out by any oblique or unexpected movement. Each board, which composes the body of the sledge, is somewhat convex on the inside, but still the whole internal surface is sufficiently smooth and even. The point in front sometimes projects a foot beyond the hollow part[5].