Reindeer and Lapps from North Sweden, now in Skansen Park, Stockholm.
But you must see them in their native habitat to really know the Lapps. So we hired a sledge whose low runners raise one but a few inches from the crisp snow, stuck our feet into the abundant straw, tucked around us the warm reindeer robes, pulled our caps over our ears, and told our driver to do his best to find a Lapp camp. This is not always easy, for the Lapps are genuine gypsies in their liking for a nomadic life, and they are here to-day, there to-morrow, and somewhere else the next day.
However our driver had an idea in what direction they might be found, and, after half a dozen English miles, or about one Swedish mile, we heard a tremendous barking of dogs and knew that we were approaching our goal, for the one indispensable quadruped, aside from the reindeer, in a Lapp encampment, is a barking dog, and often a good many of him. It was not a large camp, only a single family of Lapps with perhaps twenty or thirty reindeer and half a dozen dogs. Their only shelter, even when the mercury reaches fifty below zero, is this reindeer-skin tent, with a hole in the top and quite loose around the sides.
A miserable fire burned in the center of the tent, and some of the smoke found its way through the hole in the top. But hospitality is not unknown even in these snowy wilds, and our hosts at once set to work to make us a cup of coffee, their one luxury, which they knew their visitors would appreciate. To be sure the cup and coffeepot looked almost as dirty as the faces of our hosts, but who minds a few microbes more or less among the millions you are constantly swallowing. To be sure, also, our hosts expected a gift of several times the value of the cup of coffee, but that was purely a gift and not by any means payment for value received.
I cannot say that I fell in love with the Lapps or their surroundings, but I must confess that I conceived a new admiration for the missionary spirit of Prince Bernadotte, the brother of the King of Sweden, who I understand has sometimes come to this far north region to preach to the Laplanders.
He once informed me that the only time he was ever in Russia was when he stepped across the boundary of Swedish Lapland into Finnish Lapland, and then only a few feet on the other side. I suppose that a Swedish prince would very likely be persona non grata in the dominions of the reactionary Czar.
A half-hour in the Lapp settlement was enough for a complete disillusionment concerning the joys of nomadic life in Lapland, and we were glad to turn our faces once more toward the thriving little metropolis of the north Baltic.
Faithfully yours,
Phillips.