Through Arctic Lapland

by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

The strongest fish that swam in all the seas was beaten, and Captain Svend Foyn patented his tactics and took off his oilskins. Then the business part of him came in, and, until his monopoly ceased, his launches were catching a hundred finners a year, which may be valued at £250 apiece.

The fishery has spread since that monopoly granted by law has run out, and other people are permitted now to profit by the schemes evolved from Captain Svend Foyn’s brain. Anywhere where the rice-like animacula on which the whale feeds are to be found, there the little whaling steamers may be seen also, with a look-out man peering from the crow’s nest at their foremast head. In the fjords and bays which lie round that grim coast to eastwards of the North Cape, in Iceland, and even up some of the snug inlets of the Varanger Fjord, are numberless stations where the little steamers can bring their catch for caldrons and axes to resolve into its commercial elements. The finner soon swells after he is dead, and lies on the water like a half-submerged balloon, striped, too, balloon fashion, with gore-like seams. The tail flukes are cut adrift, and he is towed ignominiously stern first, with a wake of oil fanning out from his jaws, and a smell which grows with the days, and beats down the crisp sea air. But when the finner is beached, and the axes and spades strip off the blubber from the pink beef below, and cut away the whalebone from the head, then there arises a stink which poisons heaven. Still, custom is everything. The workers toil at the trying-out the oil, at resolving the carcase into manure, and tinned meats, and cow-fodder, and at packing the precious bone, and it never strikes them that a smell is abroad which is almost palpable in its solidness. But use is everything in tackling these sort of scents. We were beginning to find that out for ourselves.

Meanwhile the cold was making us blue. We had amplified our wardrobes by the purchase of a leather coat apiece in Vardö, and we had on these, and slop-chest oilskins, but the frosty gale beat through them all as though they had been gossamer silk. To go below was impossible. The coaster’s ’tween decks was an Aceldama of unfettered sea-sickness. The only warm spot on the spar deck was the engine-room skylight, and that was occupied by a festive Jew carousing with the skipper and a couple of farmers from the Russian side. We did not feel inclined to rejoice with them just then, for, to tell the truth, we were deadly tired. It was ten o’clock at night, and staring daylight, of course. But then it had been staring daylight with us continuously since we crossed the Arctic circle a fortnight before, and as it is hard to put in regular sleep with the sun burning high in the heavens, we had missed many a regular watch below. And the reaction was on us then. So we turned in on the deck planks below the green canvas dodgers in front of the coaster’s wheel, and slept solidly and refreshingly for two whole hours.

The hoot of the syren roused us. We had crossed the broad waters of the fjord, and were close in to the other side. High bare mountains covered with snow that was dappled with hummocky rock rose sheer up from the surf. The sky above was gray and cold. The place was indescribably sterile and savage. At one point, cowering at the foot of the mountains, a little white building stood out like some roosting sea-fowl against a background of dark craggy rock. We were heading towards it, and gradually as we closed with the coast it shaped itself into a church. It was Oscarkirche, which marks the sea end of the frontier line which delimits Russia and Norway.

We shut off steam here, and a boat came out to us from the beach. There is a Russian fishing village in a masked bay to the eastward, to which we sent a pedlar ashore with a travelling box of buttons and German knives. Poor man, he did not seem to anticipate a large rush of business, if one could judge from his face as he lowered himself and his pack into the dancing boat. And yet probably his coming was the event of the summer. It is hard to conceive a more desolate place than that Russian fishing village. But it was a summer settlement only. In winter it was deserted. And the Russian Government do their best to foster its puny trade. It is a free port; there is no customs duty on either imports or exports: canny Russia does not wish to thrust available trade into the hands of its Norwegian neighbour next door.

Away we steamed again just outside the spouting reefs, towards the Jacob’s Elv. The wind was blowing straight down on us from Polar ice, and the cold was bitter. A whale swam parallel to us, some half mile to seaward, sending up at intervals spouts of feathery gray-blue fog.

We put into many dreary little coves, where a handful of fisher-folk, with their backs against the snow and the grim walls of stone, dragged a small living from the cold waters which lapped against their thresholds. We lay off the beaches whilst these came off and did their traffic, and then on again through the reefs to the next stop. Wretched as these villages were, their populace had always spirit on hand to wrangle over politics, and no Irish Nationalist could hate his “dacent Protestant” neighbour as thoroughly and efficiently as one of these semi-savages who held “Left” opinions could loathe another who belonged to the “Right.” And they carried this distaste beyond their social relations. They had the “boycott” in full working order; “Right” would not trade with “Left” under any pretence whatever; and if Left could push “Right” a little farther towards starvation than his normal half-fed average, he considered he was doing the State a personal service.

At another time we could have moralised over this self-hindrance principle with weight and dignity, but just then we were too wrapped up in our own discomforts and the prospects of worse to follow to worry very much over the foolishness of other fools. The chill was making us shudder. The grim, savage hills of stone seemed to speak of an infinity of hardships and wretchedness before we sighted the waters of the Bothnia. And each of us told the other so often that he “liked it,” that the very repetition of the statement gave it the lie. Alone of all the ship’s company the Jew did not mind. He sat down below, and nipped brandy all the live-long night, and roared songs in all the tongues of Pentecost. He was a most cheery fellow.

We were off the entrance to Jarfjord a little after midnight. The sun was high above the poop-staff. The air was clear and icy, and spray leaped in jets from reefs on every side of us. The entrance to the fjord lay amongst a huddle of glacier-worn rocks, with a great table mountain set up in the middle of them, all snow-clad, all entirely sterile. The little coaster wound in and out amongst the reefs with easy confidence. Two small whitened islets, alive with sea-fowl, masked the entrance; and spouts of mist like the blowing of whales rose up from reefs awash on either beam. It was a giddy piece of pilotage. In the crevices, snow lay down to the water’s edge, all browned with dust. It was hard to imagine any spot more savage, and grim, and desolate.