That journey down the Syd Varanger lingers in the memory. A blazing sun dwelt overhead, in a sky as blue as one could see in Tripoli. The fjord sides were sloped in graceful curves and draped with comely greenery. The cuckoo cried to us from the woods. The air above the deep-blue water was dancing with heat, and flights of whirring cormorants and duck gave it life. I think, too, that our sense of comfort was accentuated by the knowledge that not a dozen miles to the northward the cold waves of the Varanger chilled the fishers to the bone, and frozen cliffs and snowy ridges glared icily at the sky. Comfort and complacency depend so much upon comparisons.
The absence of mosquitoes, too, was very grateful. Our faces were all mottled in close patterns from the bitings of the day before, and we told ourselves then that we had paid the initiation fee and had earned immunity for the future. We thought that past experience had taught us all about mosquitoes, but we were destined to learn a deal more about the Northern variety of the breed before we were through at the other side of Arctic Lapland.
The two Lapp canoe men provided us in the meanwhile with plenty of food for observation. Feodor was the wily one. Work was not a thing Feodor loved, and he shirked it like a diplomatist. One or other of his thole pins was constantly carrying away. That naturally had to be replaced. To do this he unshipped his paddles (which had blades shaped like the “Warre” oar at Eton) and clambered forward over the baggage, and sorted amongst the green boughs which formed our couch, till he found a piece of stick of suitable diameter. He had got a reliable eye, and always chose one that would be certain to break if properly handled; and then he went aft again and whittled it accurately down to size with his sheath-knife. Then he would give the withy beckets a thoughtful overhaul, and by the time he had got his paddles shipped again and in the water, he had usually earned a good twenty minutes’ shirk. He was a wrinkled little gnome, this skipper of ours, incredibly dirty, and brimming with good humour. He had one available eye that gleamed like a bird’s, and over the other he wore a grimy patch made fast with a piece of rope yarn round his lank black hair. Later on, when we got into a breeze, this patch kept blowing up and caused him much annoyance. It seemed that the eye itself was missing, and the wind got into the empty socket and gave him cold in the head. For which very sufficient reason he shipped his starboard paddle and held the patch in place with the spare hand, so as to keep out the draught. He was a wonderfully agile “sugarer” was this elderly Skolte Lapp.
Morris was different. He plugged away in the bows with never a grunt and never an easy. He rowed about thirty strokes to the minute, just in the water and out again, with a bent arm and without much pretence at a swing. One of us gauged these matters with a professional eye, but we did not feel inclined just then to set to work and reform the rowing style of Lapland. He was a whimsical fellow, this same Morris, always grinning at something, and always shaking back his wispy black hair from the front of his eyes. We tried to tempt him into travelling up-country with us, but he shuddered at the idea of getting out of touch with his birthplace.
We turned out of the Syd Varanger into Bogofjord and crept up by the flank of gray walls of naked upright rock against a strong ebb-tide, and amused ourselves by taking occasional compass-bearings, and marvelling at the inaccuracy of the published maps. Once we put ashore on a shelving rock covered with mussels, and the crew lunched off kippered salmon, which they ripped from the family joint in pieces with their fingers as they required it; and afterwards they sought recreation by scratching themselves thoroughly for half an hour. Then Morris put on a pair of fingerless, brown-skin gloves to keep his delicate paws from blistering, and we started again. A brown team of eider duck rustled past us, ventre à l’eau, heading for the sea, and then a school of porpoises surged by the canoe in chase of a shoal of flickering silver fish.
Swarms of mosquitoes accompanied the canoe in a noisy biting cloud, and it was some gloomy satisfaction to note that the Lapps suffered equally with ourselves. Feodor indeed suffered so much annoyance that he actually knocked off work to tie a grimy kerchief carefully round his head, which it took him twenty minutes to accomplish before he had managed it to his complete satisfaction.
Broods of duck, some familiar, some strange, began to flight, and we sighed and broke the tenth commandment. But the gun perforce had to stay in its mackintosh housing. The Norwegian Government (very properly) keeps a fatherly eye on all the game within its marches, and has appointed vigorous close-seasons for all except the outlaw wolf, the bear, the lynx, the fox, and wild cat. And they ram home the edict by a good healthy fine for wrongdoers, and a reward for the informer. Once over the Russian border it would be different. There are no game laws in Arctic Lapland. There is very little law of any description. We could bag there whatever came in our way. In fact, Feodor assured us with an impish grin that we might shoot a Laplander should we feel so disposed, provided always we ate him afterwards so as to conceal the carcass from a possible public view. Feodor, the one-eyed, was occasionally rather grisly in his ideas of wit and humour.
A heavy, drenching rain-squall came on and blotted out all view, and beat up a small, steep sea, which gave Feodor all he could do to keep the little canoe from being swamped; and as it was, we two passengers had to bale industriously to keep the water under. But we did not mind; the mosquitoes were driven away, and it was an ecstasy to be without them; the rain, too, cooled our itching bites.
But when we crossed the big fjord for the last time, and turned up between the low alluvial banks of the Neiden Elv, the wet squall blew over, and the sun blazed out again, making creation steam. The mosquitoes came back promptly and punctually, and got to work. On the mud banks, flocks of woodcock were digging for supper. Small black ducks took their fluffy broods for excursions on the broad shallow river, where salmon leaped for sheer sportiveness. Wading fowl plodded and cried in the adjacent marshes, and from the graceful birch forests which covered the alluvial flats, cuckoos hooted news of stolen nests. All the Arctic world was rejoicing in its summer.