Now under the brilliant glare of a summer sun, Boris Gleb is not a good place to visit. Gazed at from afar—say from above Elvenaes, as we saw it first—it is a fairy chapel set in beauty. Looked at close-to, it is merely a flimsy building of wood, freakishly architected, and painted an indifferent white. The inside is tawdry. The priest is a vulgar showman who would bring out his mother’s corpse for a fee, and the interesting model Skolte Lapps are just about as artificial as all the rest of the paraphernalia. One does not exactly blame either parson or flock; they are the possessors of a spectacle, and they exhibit it for a living; only one kicks one’s self for going to stare.
But Boris Gleb during one night of the long dark gloom of winter shows a very different scene. On the Russian 6th of January (the 18th by our reckoning) there takes place the annual Daubsfest, and from over the bleak snows of the fjeld come in the reindeer sledges of Lapps who hold to the Orthodox faith. For a week previous to the 6th, they are straggling in towards the sacred place, and they crowd into the wooden houses of the Skolte Lapps settlement, and spend much time in prayer. On the 5th of January there is a solemn fast. On the day of the Daubsfest they all come out of the warm lamp-lit houses into the Arctic gloom, men and women both, treading barefoot in the snow, all clad merely in a single linen shirt. They are girt under the arm-pits by a stout woollen scarf, and in that bitter windy cold they march three times round the church, solemnly chanting. The priest in his stiff embroidered robes leads, and he is a showman no longer now, but an earnest Russian pope; and with him go the surpliced acolytes bearing candles. Three times round the white church they move, the icy wind whipping the bare bodies of the singers, and the snow curls wreathing round their ankles. And then they go off to the middle of the frozen river, and the ceremony proceeds.
A hole has been dug with hatchets through the ice, and one by one the Lapps come forward from the circle of worshippers, and the attendants take them in charge. They lay hold of the scarf beneath the arms, and the pilgrim is soused once, twice, and a third time deep into the cold black water which scours so swiftly beneath the ice; and each time the pope waves the three-armed crucifix before the pilgrim’s eyes before they go under. And when all have been immersed, they go back to the houses, men and women both, and rub themselves with cloths, and put on deerskin cloaks, and drink scalding tea in all abundance; and they begin on the morrow to collect upon their persons another twelve months’ dirt.
But whilst it is in action, that Daubsfest at Boris Gleb is an impressive spectacle. The crowd of shirt-clad Lapps standing there in the cold and dark of the Arctic night, the faint light of the candles and torches flaring in the wind, the long-haired pope in his stiff, embroidered vestments bright with barbaric colours, the aurora borealis burning with its unspeakable glories far off on the Northern sky, and the great white church looming weirdly through the gloom, make up a sight that few who have seen it will ever be inclined to forget.
[Daubsfest] at Boris Gleb.
At Elvenaes once more a change of plan was forced upon us, and this time it was the Czar who interfered. His Imperial Majesty had sent a Boundary Commission to fix the frontier line between his possessions and those of his cousin of Norway, and almost all the available men of Boris Gleb and Elvenaes had gone to the Commissioner’s camp either as servants, or advisers, or mere camp followers. Consequently the passage to Enare See up the Pasvik Elv, which requires many arms to wield the paddles and make the portages, was debarred. The utmost force we could rake up was two dilapidated Russian Skolte Lapps, who would ferry us in a canoe by the fjords and rivers to the Neiden, where we must trust to luck in finding carriers who would take us through overland.
We accepted the alternative with philosophy, and told them we would start at once. They said “certainly,” and proceeded to waste the next two hours in elaborately doing nothing. We sat down and smoked and watched them: they were most laborious over it; they sweated and perspired; and at last, having completed nothing most satisfactorily, they announced smilingly that they were ready to get under way, and we stepped on board.
The little craft was very much like a Canadian canoe in her lines, and floated corkily. She was stained a rich saddle-colour with tar, which came off in generous patches where one leaned against it. The younger Lapp (whom we called Morris, through his resemblance to an acquaintance) sat on the floor-boards forward, with his back in the curve of the bow, and sculled with a pair of paddles which worked in withy beckets on thole pins. Feodor, the skipper, squatted aft, with his paddles also in beckets, and laboured on whichever side was required. As no more paddles were available, we two English posed as passengers, and lay in magnificence amidship on a luxurious couch of young green birch shoots, with our worldly goods and chattels bestowed fore and aft of us. The canoe just held her load, and there was nothing much to spare, and the Lapps occupied another half hour in getting her trimmed to their satisfaction. Then Morris pushed out into the swirling rapids of the Pasvik, and we left behind us Elvenaes, and those who waved us farewell, probably for always.