History.—The Lapps have a dim tradition that their ancestors lived in a far eastern land, and they tell rude stories of conflicts with Norsemen and Karelians. But no answer can be obtained from them in regard to their early distribution and movements. It has been maintained that they were formerly spread over the whole of the Scandinavian peninsula, and they have even been considered the remnants of that primeval race of cave-dwellers which hunted the reindeer over the snow-fields of central and western Europe. But much of the evidence adduced for these theories is highly questionable. The contents of the so-called Lapps’ graves found in various parts of Scandinavia are often sufficient in themselves to show that the appellation must be a misnomer, and the syllable Lap or Lapp found in many names of places can often be proved to have no connexion with the Lapps.[5] They occupied their present territory when they are first mentioned in history. According to Düben the name first occurs in the 13th century—in the Fundinn Noregr, composed about 1200, in Saxo Grammaticus, and in a papal bull of date 1230; but the people are probably to be identified with those Finns of Tacitus whom he describes as wild hunters with skins for clothing and rude huts as only means of shelter, and certainly with the Skrithiphinoi of Procopius (Goth. ii. 15), the Scritobini of Paulus Warnefridus, and the Scridifinni of the geographer of Ravenna. Some of the details given by Procopius, in regard for instance to the treatment of infants, show that his informant was acquainted with certain characteristic customs of the Lapps.
In the 9th century the Norsemen from Norway began to treat their feeble northern neighbours as a subject race. The wealth of Ottar, “northmost of the northmen,” whose narrative has been preserved by King Alfred, consisted mainly of six hundred of those “deer they call hrenas” and in tribute paid by the natives; and the Eigils saga tells how Brynjulf Bjargulfson had his right to collect contributions from the Finns (i.e. the Lapps) recognized by Harold Haarfager. So much value was attached to this source of wealth that as early as 1050 strangers were excluded from the fur-trade of Finmark, and a kind of coast-guard prevented their intrusion. Meantime the Karelians were pressing on the eastern Lapps, and in the course of the 11th century the rulers of Novgorod began to treat them as the Norsemen had treated their western brethren. The ground-swell of the Tatar invasion drove the Karelians westward in the 13th century, and for many years even Finmark was so unsettled that the Norsemen received no tribute from the Lapps. At length in 1326 a treaty was concluded between Norway and Russia by which the supremacy of the Norwegians over the Lapps was recognized as far east as Voljo beyond Kandalax on the White Sea, and the supremacy of the Russians over the Karelians as far as Lyngen and the Målself. The relations of the Lapps to their more powerful neighbours were complicated by the rivalry of the different Scandinavian kingdoms. After the disruption of the Calmar Union (1523) Sweden began to assert its rights with vigour, and in 1595 the treaty of Teusina between Sweden and Russia decreed “that the Lapps who dwell in the woods between eastern Bothnia and Varanger shall pay their dues to the king of Sweden.” It was in vain that Christian IV. of Denmark visited Kola and exacted homage in 1599, and every year sent messengers to protest against the collection of his tribute by the Swedes (a custom which continued down to 1806). Charles of Sweden took the title of “king of the Kajans and Lapps,” and left no means untried to establish his power over all Scandinavian Lapland. By the peace of Knäröd (1613) Gustavus Adolphus gave up the Swedish claim to Finmark; and in 1751 mutual renunciations brought the relations of Swedish and Norwegian (Danish) Lapland to their present position. Meanwhile Russian influence had been spreading westward; and in 1809, when Alexander I. finally obtained the cession of Finland, he also added to his dominions the whole of Finnish Lapland to the east of the Muonio and the Köngämä. It may be interesting to mention that Lapps, armed with bows and arrows, were attached to certain regiments of Gustavus Adolphus in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War.
The Lapps have had the ordinary fate of a subject and defenceless people; they have been utilized with little regard to their own interest or inclinations. The example set by the early Norwegians was followed by the Swedes: a peculiar class of adventurers known as the Birkarlians (from Bjark or Birk, “trade”) began in the 13th century to farm the Lapps, and, receiving very extensive privileges from the kings, grew to great wealth and influence. In 1606 there were twenty-two Birkarlians in Tornio, seventeen in Lule, sixteen in Pite, and sixty-six in Ume Lappmark. They are regularly spoken of as having or owning Lapps, whom they dispose of as any other piece of property. In Russian Lapland matters followed much the same course. The very institutions of the Solovets monastery, intended by St Tryphon for the benefit of the poor neglected pagans, turned out the occasion of much injustice towards them. By a charter of Ivan Vasilivitch (November 1556), the monks are declared masters of the Lapps of the Motoff and Petchenga districts, and they soon sought to extend their control over those not legally assigned to them (Ephimenko). Other monasteries were gifted with similar proprietary rights; and the supplication of the patriarch Nikon to Alexis Mikhaelovitch, for example, shows clearly the oppression to which the Lapps were subjected.
It is long, however, since these abuses were abolished; and in Scandinavia more especially the Lapps of the present day enjoy the advantages resulting from a large amount of philanthropic legislation on the part of their rulers. There seems to be no fear of their becoming extinct, except it may be by gradual amalgamation with their more powerful neighbours. In Norway the total number of Lapps was 20,786 in 1891, and in Sweden in 1904 it was officially estimated that there were 7000. Add to these some 3000 for Russian Lapland, and the total Lapp population approximates to 30,000. In Sweden the Lapps are gradually abandoning their nomadic habits and becoming merged in the Swedish population. The majority of the Norwegian Lapps lead a semi-nomadic existence; but the number of inveterate nomads can scarcely reach 1500 at the present day. In Sweden there are about 3500 nomads.
Authorities.—G. von Düben, Om Lappland och Lapparne (Stockholm, 1873), with list of over 200 authorities; C. Rabot, “La Laponie suédoise d’après les récentes explorations de MM. Svenonius et Hamberg,” La Géographie, Soc. Géog. de Paris VII. (1903); S. Passarge, Fahrten in Schweden, besonders in Nordschweden und Lappland (Berlin, 1897); Bayard Taylor, Northern Travel (London, 1858); E. Rae, The White Sea Peninsula (London, 1882), and Land of the North Wind (London, 1875); P. B. du Chaillu, Land of the Midnight Sun (London, 1881); S. Tromholt, Under the Rays of the Aurora Borealis (London, 1885); Y. Nielsen, Det Norske geogr. Selskabs Aarbog (1891); H. H. Reusch, Folk og natur i Finmarken (1895); K. B. Wicklund, De Svenska nomadlapparnas flyttningar till Norge i älore och nyare tid (Upsala, 1908); see also [Sweden]. Among older works may be mentioned Scheffer, Lapponia (Frankfurt, 1673, English trans. Oxford, 1674); Regnard, Voyage de Laponie, English version in Pinkerton’s Voyages, vol. i.; Leem, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper (Copenhagen, 1767), in Danish and Latin; see also Pinkerton, loc. cit.; Sir A. de C. Brooke, A Winter in Lapland (London, 1827); Laestadius, Journal (1831).
As to the language, J. A. Friis, professor of Lapp in the university of Christiania, has published Lappiske Sprogprover: en samling lapp. eventyr, ordsprog, og gåder (Christiania, 1856), and Lappisk mythologi eventyr og folkesagn (Christiania, 1871). See also G. Donner, Lieder der Lappen (Helsingfors, 1876); Poestion, Lappländische Märchen, &c. (Vienna, 1885). Grammars of the Lapp tongue have been published by Fjellström (1738), Leem (1748), Rask (1832), Stockfleth (1840); lexicons by Fjellström (1703), Leem (1768-1781), Lindahl (1780), Stockfleth (1852). Among more recent works may be mentioned a dictionary (1885), by J. A. Friis; a reader, with German translations (1888), by J. Qvigstad; a dictionary (1890) and two grammars (1891 and 1897) of the Luleå dialect, and a chrestomathy of Norwegian Lappish (1894), by K. B. Wiklund; a dictionary of Russian Lappish, or the Kola dialect (1891), by A. Genetz; readers of different dialects (1885-1896), by J. Halász; and a grammar of Norwegian Lappish (1882), by S. Nielsen; further, a comparative study of Lappish and Finnish by Qvigstad in the Acts of the Finnish Academy of Science, vol. xii., 1883; the same author’s Nordische Lehnwörter im Lappischen (1893); Wiklund, Entwurf einer urlappischen Lautlehre (1896); see also various articles by these writers, Paasonen and others in the Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne and the Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen; Qvigstad and Wiklund, Bibliographie der lappischen Literatur (1900).
The older literature on the Lapps received a notable addition by the discovery in 1896, among the letters of Linnaeus preserved in the British Museum, of a MS. diary of a journey made in 1695 to the north of Swedish Lappmark by Olof Rudbeck the younger. On missionary work see Stockfleth, Dagbog over mine missions Reiser (1860); E. Haller, Svenska Kyrkans mission i Lappmarken (1896). It was not until 1840 that the New Testament was translated into Norwegian Lappish, and not until 1895 that the entire Bible was printed in the same dialect. In the Russian dialect of Lappish there exist only two versions of St Matthew’s gospel.
[1] The most probable etymology is the Finnish lappu, and in this case the meaning would be the “land’s end folk.”
[2] Hence they have been supposed by many to be the originals of the “little folk” of Scandinavian legend.