At church I observed some men with a girdle of black list, just as it was rent from the cloth, wound two or three times round the waist, which formed a contrast with their grey jackets. The women however dress in articles purchased from other countries, and make quite a different appearance from the Lapland females.
East Bothnia, being a low country, abounds in marshes, bogs, and fens. The grass is tall; but still there is such a deficiency of hay, that they buy up horse-dung at Tornea, and boil it, as I have said, in the boilers built up in some of their houses; in which also they boil water to pour over the reindeer moss.
The bread used by the inhabitants of this country in the present season of scarcity was made principally of chaff cut fine and ground.
The winter rye, sown but this day se'n-night, had already sprung up, and made the fields quite green.
I returned back to Tornea in the evening.
August 13.
This being a fast day, I heard a sermon in the Finnish tongue, preached at the church of Tornea. A lawful wife was churched, after her lying-in; which ceremony was performed in the choir, near the elevated part. The women in general had either naturally white hair, or hair that
had once been brown, now turned grey. Very few had it red. They wear their hair rather straight.
The physiognomy of both men and women is phlegmatic and stupid; the body clumsy, the complexion bad, and the features destitute of all delicacy of form or expression.