How nice it was to put clean underwear on. How comfortable it felt. I put on a new pair of reindeer trousers, that were lent to me and that had never been worn before, and a new "kapta." Here was a good occasion to have my underwear washed, and my fur garments cleansed of everything, for it was over 40 degrees below zero. This wearing of the same clothes for a long time is the greatest hardship of travelling in winter in the Arctic regions; for in the course of time obnoxious things swarm in the fur and also in the woollen underwear. When these become unendurable the following way of washing has to be performed without soap or water.
After a person has changed his fur garments and underwear, he hangs them outside when the temperature is from 20 to 50 degrees below zero. The colder it is, the better for the clothes that are to be cleansed. These are left hanging for several days, during which time all the noxious things are killed by the intense cold. After this the underwear and the fur garments are well shaken and beaten, and then they return from this kind of laundry clean, according to the views of the Arctic regions, and are ready to be worn again. I often had my clothing washed in that manner, and also my sleeping-bags.
On Sunday many Lapps attended the Lutheran church from different parts of the country, coming either on skees or with their sleighs; those who lived far away starting the day before. Some had come even so far as one hundred and fifty miles. I was present at the religious services; the church was crowded. The clergyman was not in his clerical robes, but dressed in furs—like the rest of the congregation, for the churches are not heated.
On my return from church, the Lapps asked me where I was going. I replied I wanted to go as far as the land went north of me, as far as Nordkyn. They all wondered why I wanted to go there. They asked me if I was a merchant and bought fish. I told them I was not, but that I travelled to see the country and its people. They thought I was a very strange man, and they wondered at my ways.
This hamlet was composed of about twelve homesteads. The dwelling-houses were built of logs, those for beasts of turf or stones. By the church was the schoolhouse, and there was a large store very much like our country stores at home.
The inhabitants owned about sixty cows,—such small cows! they were about three feet in height—one hundred and seventy sheep and a few oxen as small as the cows.
Kautokeino was full of nomadic Lapps, and we had a good time together, for the Lapps are very friendly and I had learned to love them. "We come here," they said, "to meet our friends, to see our children who are in school, to get some of the provisions kept in our storehouses and other things we want; and we bring with us skins of reindeer and the garments and shoes that have been made in our tents."
In this church hamlet were a number of very old Lapps, men and women who could no longer follow their reindeer and endure a hard, wandering life. Thither also the sick or the lame come, to stay until they get well or die. Two Lapps were pointed out to me who were nearly one hundred years old.
The inhabitants of these Lapp hamlets are not nomadic; they live on the produce of their farms, the increase of their reindeer, by catching salmon, and in employing themselves as sailors on the fishing-boats of the Arctic Sea, which they reach by descending the rivers.
The Lapp women wore queer-fitting little caps of bright colors, and when in holiday dress wore a number of large showy silk handkerchiefs. Sometimes they had as many as four, on the top of one another, over their fur dresses; they wore necklaces of large glass beads, round their waists were silver belts, and their fingers were ornamented with rings. They wore trousers of reindeer skin, as the Lapp women do universally. The men wore peaked caps.