Through Arctic Lapland

by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

This was certainly the most prosperous place that we had come across since entering the country, and it was marvellous to think that such a spot could exist so far inland and so deep within the Arctic Circle. There were store sheds and outhouses running right up from the lake beach, in all abundance; and the big, log dwelling-house itself, on the top of the rise, was a place of mark. It had yellow window frames and a shingle roof. Its big kitchen living-room measured twenty good feet by five-and-twenty, and it had no less than two separate bedrooms, not to mention the usual combined dairy-bedroom, each with a separate door of its own.

But then this estate was no one-man farm. It doubtless had called one man owner sometime during history; but he had begotten sons, who shared the land between them, more Hibernico, and then in the recent past these amalgamated into a sensible partnership. By dyke and axe they had added a few more acres to the ancestral plot from the forest swamp at the back; but only a very few: mere husbandry is of small account in this far Northern clime. What they did was to increase the number of nets, and build more fishing canoes, and more drying sheds in which to cure the catch. It was from the lake they got the more important harvest. The milk and the cheese, and the rye and the meat of sheep and oxen, were good, but they could not be depended on. It was the fish that never failed. No Arctic storm, no broken summer, could kill the crop of the lake or deny it leave to ripen.

Still twenty acres of good mowing-grass had this partnership got growing bravely in their rail-enclosed fields, and a potato garden, and a flock of sheep, and some dozen healthy cows; and as wealth goes in Lapland, they were rich men. But the struggle for existence up there in the North does not permit of any idle hands. If a sufficient living is to be got, all must work for it. There was no sitting back to enjoy a life of moneyed ease on the shores of Muddusjärvi.

The place, as we saw it, hummed so briskly with work that we were almost ashamed of our own unattached condition. A big catch of fish had just been brought in from the lake, and they lay gleaming against the grass, sorted out into tubs according to their kind, awaiting their turn for evisceration. All spare hands were hard at this work. One of the partners, a comparatively big man for a Lapp, gave the lead. He took his fish up by the back, cut through three-quarters of the neck down to the backbone, slit up the belly, emptied the guts on to the grass, and twisted the tail-flukes through a slit in the gills, so as to keep the flattened carcass perpetually open. Two women and a bent old man toiled at the same work, though with less deftness; and two small girls squatted on the grass, and picked with care the fishes’ sounds from amongst the other inconsidered debris, and washed them in water, and stored them in a wooden bowl of birch.

In the shed built for that purpose, these finny spoils, strung on sticks, were put up to dry. There were no salmon or trout there; they were all coarse fish; some, of the bigness of sardines, strung through the eyes; some, of the perch tribes, hooped into circles like those above described; and a few stray pike, half decapitated, each on his own especial withe, hung up like shrivelled criminals with their wicked heads a-cock.

There was a draw-well in front of the house, with a huge, straddling counterpoise-derrick over it in constant use. We stood by this for some time watching the bustling life of the place. Johann came and said that a carrier was available, but he must dine before he set out, and he (Johann) had received an invitation to dine also. We accepted the delay, and when one of the ladies asked us, we went up to the house. She produced stools, and wiped them down with a corner of her skirt before offering them to be sat on. Verily feminine human nature of a certain class is much the same all the world over.

A [Prosperous] Lapp Settlement.

It was the dairy-bedroom we sat in, the room of state and honour, and as it was comparatively free from mosquitoes—there were some paltry dozen or so to remind us of our immunity—we rolled cigarettes in peace, and Hayter produced a sketch-book. The old woman who had charge of us was shown what was wanted, and took up her position, nothing loath. She stood like a professional model—a rare thing in this fidgety land—and the sketch progressed with speed.