Through Arctic Lapland

by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

Our course swung through half the points of the compass as the water channels swerved to this side and that, or the fords lay to our right or left, and those exasperating carriers grew slower in their pace, and more frequent in their halts, and we had resigned ourselves to another fifteen solid hours of torment, when a great streak of luck befell us. Between some bushes at the side of a long narrow lake there lay a canoe.

She was pulled on to the bank and lay bottom upwards, and who she belonged to we did not know—or care. We were in the mood then to have cheerfully annexed the Czar’s own private dinghy even with sure foreknowledge that he wanted it himself during the next half hour. And the carriers seemed to be similarly without scruple. The packs went down to the ground in quick time; the loppy-legged boy said something funny and laughed; even the squint-eyed man smiled. The canoe was rolled on to her keel and shot into the water. The luggage and ourselves went amidships; the Finns distributed themselves forward and aft; and away we went with rather less than an inch of free-board.

Now so long as we were in smooth water, this method of travelling was delightful. The mosquitoes were comparatively absent—we had merely a paltry thousand or two to remind us of the ravening swarms elsewhere. There was a brilliant sun. And the hump-backed man, who was squatting on the floor forward, paddled us on at an excellent pace. But when we got out in broader water, there was a good ripple on, and the lake came over both gunwales merrily. The canoe, moreover, was thoroughly sun-cracked, and leaked like a basket, and nothing but industrious baling kept us afloat at all. There were always two of us at it, watch and watch about; and we worked till our arms ached.

The Finns, being brought up in a country full of rivers and water-ways, naturally could not swim, and if we two foreigners had only had our two selves to think of, I fancy we should have let that canoe swamp. We had suffered many things at the hands of those carriers, and we should much have liked to have seen them—well, inconvenienced. I know this sounds brutal here from a distance, but we were warmed up to it then, and meant what we said, as other people who have met the Northern Finn on his native marsh will possibly understand. But we had the baggage to consider, and the baggage turned the scale. We made them hug the weather shores, and kept the balers going without intermission.

It was not all plain rowing, even then. Twice the lake-chain broke; the rivers which linked the broader water were too shallow to carry a canoe; and we were forced to make a portage. But if the canoe was small on the water, she was small also on land; and many hands made light work; and we had her out, up, over, and launched in almost as quick time as one could have walked over the intervening necks of land.

But we were not done with the marching yet. The navigable water ended for good, and once more we were put to footing it through the forest, and suffering from the flies. But the scenery had changed. The birches had gone, and so had the Arctic willows, and around us were nothing but tall gaunt pines, for the most part bleached and dead. A parasite had invaded the forest and was killing it by slow inches. The same thing is seen festooning the timber in Florida and Louisiana and the Gulf States generally, where it is called Spanish moss. It is gray there, and looks dreary enough as it hangs in melancholy wisps from its dead or dying victim. But here it was far darker, being in texture like a harsh wool, almost black; and as it swung in the breeze from those blighted boughs, it reminded one of funeral plumes. Here, too, there was no undergrowth of palmetto and saw-grass to tone down the gloom: at the foot of these doomed trunks was one unvarying carpet of sulphur-coloured moss.

As we marched on (with the never-varying series of halts) the outlines of a path appeared, crossed and recrossed by the spoor of deer. The lemmings grew more shy. Against some of the tree trunks the yellow moss was stacked in columns six feet high to fodder cows in winter. The marks of axes appeared on the timber, and there were stumps new-scarred. And then the gleam of water showed through the tree aisles. Our carriers brisked up; even the humpback straightened himself; and the pace quickened—to something close on three miles an hour. We swung round a bluff of sand, and before us lay a log-house painted dragon’s-blood red, with a bay beyond whereon rode a masted boat. That one house made up the town of Ischinlisvuoni, the northernmost port of Enare See.

Now our first thought was to get a boat which would take us over the great lake to Enare town, which was distant some eighty-five miles in crow flight; and here we were in luck’s way. The miniature viking ship riding in the bay had just come up from the very place, and her crew jumped at the chance (and the profit) of taking us back. We had to wait, however, till she was refitted. They had met heavy weather on the way up it appeared, and in one squall their high square-sail had split neatly down the whole of one of its seams, and naturally this had to be mended before she could put to sea again. So we went into the red log-house, and took possession of one of the two rooms, which was furnished principally with a large white-washed rubble stove that reached up to the roof beams.

The population, however, though nominally they had cleared out of their bedchamber for our benefit, had no notion of leaving us to ourselves. The whole lot of them came in to stare at first, and when the ruck had gone, there always remained an escort of at least six of both sexes, who loafed in the doorway, and spat, and watched us as though we had been performing animals. Occasionally we drove them out and would be alone for perhaps two minutes, but then again the door would open and others would come into the room, spit thoughtfully at the floor, and then get their eyes deliberately focussed. They did not speak either to themselves or to us; and if they enjoyed the performance, they did not show it in their faces. They remained always the same wooden, unemotional boors, and we found by experience the only way to deal satisfactorily with the Arctic farmer Finns was to take the upper hand, and keep it. Any attempt at civility they construed as weakness, and then took advantage of us as a matter of course.

It is queer how these people can thus isolate themselves. The Norwegian of the North is one of the most civil and obliging fellows on the face of the earth. The Lapp, though he is frequently a savage in his personal habits, is none the less a courteous gentleman in his intercourse with others. And even the Finn fisher has occasionally some rudiments of civilness and hospitality. But these others are past praying for. They can read and write, they are oppressed by no government stress, they could make an easy livelihood if only they had the gumption and the energy to take it, but they prefer to remain the greatest clods within all the marches of Europe.